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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025772">A Journey To Emilio</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supermouse/pseuds/Supermouse'>Supermouse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Albus Dumbledore Being an Idiot, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Morally Grey Harry Potter, No graphic sex, Overcoming Disability With Magic, Overpowered Harry Potter, Physical Abuse, Physical Disability, Slytherin Harry Potter, Teens Fooling Around</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:40:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>33,798</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supermouse/pseuds/Supermouse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After a few too many hard knocks in early childhood, magic has turned Harry into a tough, twisted, somewhat impaired and very ugly version of himself with a severe speech defect.</p><p>Magic is also going to help him learn how to kick everybody's backside.</p><p>This is the tale of a Harry who has learned the hard way that adults are fallible and that he will have to rely only on himself, and his long, slow journey to a very different life than the one Dumbledore had in store for him. The lessons he learns are not the ones most adults wanted to teach him and the family he ends up with is not the one Dumbledore set him with.</p><p>This story is written in a very sparse style and chapters are very short. The longest chapter is still less than one thousand, five hundred words long and the beginning chapters tend towards five hundred words.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter &amp; Original Male Character(s), Harry Potter/Original Female Character(s), Sirius Black &amp; Harry Potter, Susan Bones/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>129</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>242</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Hermit Crab and the Owl Go To School</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Life was hard, and, while wizards were tougher than muggles, there was a limit.</p><p>A few small changes in random outcomes, a few accidents, a few extra turns around an already vicious spiral, and Harry had a thickened left arm with a slightly twisted hand, that he kept hidden under his oversized jumpers. </p><p>Those trying to grab it to see what he was hiding bounced away. Except, for some reason, his so-loving family, so he had to learn to just not mind them instead.</p><p>After a few experiments with a cricket bat, when Dudley, a boisterous, growing boy, was not yet five and was only trying to pretend to be Aunt Marge, bless him, Harry didn't run. Or cry. He had a slightly shuffling walk, so he just had to take whatever happened. Obviously, the Dursleys said, he was making a fuss about nothing and Being Dramatic. </p><p>It wasn't as if they hadn't taken him to hospital to be checked. Harry had no actual broken bones, and had obviously grown that way, which only made him more of a freak. It was wilful and unnatural. </p><p>Whatever Harry thought about this, he wasn't sharing. Dudley was taught to not be silly, Harry was messing around, and neighbours knew it was congenital and preferred anyway to not see anything the Dursleys might be up to, not when Uncle Vernon had friends in high places and a large vindictive streak. </p><p>Dudley and his friends realised they'd gone too far when Harry's bloody left eye wasn't really an eye, but <em>that</em> healed overnight as well, after he hid the injury and crawled into his cupboard. There was a ragged pink hole there instead, surrounded by thick scars. After that, nobody wanted to touch him. Harry was not grabbed again, but they'd throw stones at him to get him to move on.</p><p>Neighbours avoided even looking at him. It was as if they saw only what Aunt Petunia's words described.</p><p>When Dudley and his friends had a trip to the zoo, they left Harry in his cupboard. No one was about to argue him out of there. It was his safe place. They called him 'Hermit' and 'Hermit Crab'. He pretended they didn't exist.</p><p>When Hagrid came to get Harry, he saw James's son. Everyone saw Harry's best side first. Seeing the left side of him, Hagrid became uncomfortable.</p><p>Vernon didn't want his wife's unwanted nephew learning magic tricks, when he'd already nearly broken Dudley's wrist with freakishness. Hagrid could take him away and good riddance.</p><p>Harry had to be fitted for a school uniform. A blond boy stood on Harry's left, and didn't even try to talk to him. He wasn't sure Harry was human.</p><p>Harry had an extra-long sleeve on his left side.</p><p>Harry couldn't drag his own trunk down the stairs from the storage room where it was kept. He had to bring his things down in carrier bags and the trunk after. Vernon stuffed the in the bags back in, willy-nilly.</p><p>Harry, as usual, said nothing, just stared out of his one good eye, giving Vernon the creeps. Then he shuffled to his usual seat in the car and, as always, took a long time belting himself in.</p><p>Vernon was glad to drop the boy off at the station, with his too-heavy trunk. They didn't laugh cruelly - they just got out of there. Harry rescued his caged owl, Hedwig, finding her somehow none the worse for being sealed in a trunk in a car boot all the way to London.</p><p>People actually, eventually helped him get his trunk onto a trolley and to Platform 9, while talking to him in loud, simple words.</p><p>He made it to the Hogwarts Express on time, and, from the various looks of horror, wasn't welcome to any compartment, and someone had made off with his trunk while he was still carrying things onto the train in carrier bags. He had three carrier bags of stuff and his owl, and kept shuffling them down, until he found an empty compartment and let himself in.</p><p>Things were going to be difficult, but Harry was used to things being difficult. He was also used to his magic lashing out if people tried to grab hold of him, and had little fear of other people. He had his wand and his owl and <em>she was still fond of him</em>. She was worth the cupboard being as cramped as it was.</p><p>He spent his time trying to make his wand work and reading his two textbooks, now he actually had them and they weren't locked away.</p><p>The trolley witch left after Harry shook his head. He didn't want to deal with getting money out one-handed, all the awkwardness. He'd rather go hungry. It wasn't as if he wasn't used to it.</p><p>"Excuse me, have you seen a toad— oh, sorry. Wrong compartment." The frizzy-haired girl went red and hurried away.</p><p>The boy that was with her stared a moment, then was dragged off.</p><p>A somewhat familiar blond boy with two big goons looked in and left, saying "What was <em>that</em>? Not anything human... some prank..."</p><p>A voice told him to get changed into school uniform. Harry had a robe and pulled it on over his existing clothes. No tie. </p><p>He left Hedwig, with one last head-scratch and stumped off to see if Hogwarts would be any better than Little Whinging. He doubted it.</p>
<hr/><p>On the way up to the castle, Harry was slower than the rest. Hagrid picked him up and ended up thrown away, bouncing down the stairs, much to everyone's alarm.</p><p>"Just a bit o' accidental magic, yeh'll grow out of it," Hagrid said cheerfully, from the bottom of the stairs. He climbed back up, stiffly. "Yeh'll get up when yeh do, I reckon. I'll tell Professor McGonagall."</p><p>Harry nodded and kept on going up the stairs while more nimble children went ahead and eventually out of sight entirely.</p><p>"Whatever that is, it shouldn't be allowed at a school," someone was complaining. "Probably some half-goblin abomination that fool Dumbledore let in..."</p><p>There were protests at those words that faded as well.</p><p>Harry kept climbing. One step, then another, then another. Once he was powerful, he'd show them all. For now, magic was his guardian and protector, even from someone as big as Hagrid.</p><p>Big and tough. Vernon wouldn't have bounced like that. He'd have spent weeks in a plaster cast.</p><p>Big and tough and very friendly. Hagrid had cast no blame, at all, on Harry himself.</p><p>So now Harry had two people he liked and one wasn't even an owl and could talk.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This work is dedicated to Wyste who wrote A Problem with Potions and who taught me to not worry about chapter length and to just have fun. If you haven't read it, Harry is adorable, Snape is bewildered and it's a very fun read.</p><p>I've been conservative on warnings, it gets no more graphic than Chapter One, but that still has its moments.</p><p>Comments very welcome. Let me know what you think!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Where Else Would He Be?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump, step by step, Harry pulled his body up eighty-six stone stairs. He got to the top in time to be Sorted.</p><p>He was addressed by a column of green tartan with a stern Scottish voice. "There you are. Whatever are you wearing? Well, no time to fix that now, your Head of House will have to see to it. I'll call your name and you go to the hat, put it on and you'll be sorted to your House."</p><p>"You missed the song," said a kind boy Harry didn't recognise. But then he recognised about three people here at all, and he wouldn't exactly call those people friends.</p><p>Sorting didn't look to be too much of an ordeal. The floor was flat. Nobody was throwing anything.</p><p>When his name was called, Harry smiled a grim smile and stumped forward. The silence was wonderful. Harry generally presented his best face, but now they saw his most sinister side, with all the marks of hard living and his general refusal to let anyone see when he was hurt, or to touch him when they could see. </p><p>He sat down facing them and all their whispers. Put on the hat.</p><p>"Hm... what have we here? Ambition, determination, perserverence... Slytherin would do well for you, you could become great there."</p><p>Sounds good, Harry thought. He'd like to be great.</p><p>"SLYTHERIN!"</p><p>"I'm not really surprised," he heard someone say.</p><p>"Thank goodness!" said another.</p><p>Harry smiled nastily, put down the Sorting Hat, patted it fondly and stumped his way to the Slytherin table.</p><p>"Oh good God," said Draco in horror.</p><p>Harry smirked. He was glad to see one of the goons shrink from him.</p><p>When the Sorting was done, Harry was conspicuously alone, which suited him just fine. The second years had shuffled down the benches and the new first years didn't want to come close to him. Greengrass had actually climbed off the bench and gone round so as to not be directly on his left, taking Bulstrode with her.</p><p>The Headmaster said some <em>very</em> odd words, and then there was more food than Harry had ever seen in one place in his life, even on Dudley's birthday.</p><p>Harry was going to learn magic so it would be his other hand. Hands multiple. He might get hurt on the way, but really, that wasn't an issue. These days, it always felt like it was happening to someone else, if it even hurt at all.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. You're A Wizard, Harry.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Once he got to his dorm, Harry had his own bed, which was a first, with his trunk and all his things, the carrier bags neatly stacked in one corner. He was better off then he had been, and curiously grateful to the unseen beings who had done this for him. He pulled off his robe and his sock and climbed into bed.</p><p>"Haven't you even heard of night clothes?" Draco complained. Harry hoped the boy would come and poke him and get blasted across the room. He hoped he wouldn't throw stones. Or spells.</p><p>In the morning, Harry showered and got properly dressed, in school clothes over his ridiculous underwear that had to be clipped on since Harry couldn't tie knots. School robes were so loose that it shouldn't be an issue, except that Malfoy the Complainer went and got someone, who shrank Harry's underwear for him and made him put his clips away.</p><p>Harry was actually pleased. He could have done without the tormenting, but, well, Crabbe had already learned the hard way to not push, shove or grab Harry.</p><p>Herbology was a trial. Charms was wonderful, a stepping stone to real magic. Transfiguration was complicated, but iron-hard determination helped, as did fixing an image of a needle in place in his mind and forcing the matchstick to behave. He had a grey cylinder at the end and collected points.</p><p>He wondered if he had to save them up to get some sort of prize.</p><p>In Potions, he more or less managed, used to improvising. He was no better or worse than anyone else, except Toad Boy who was stupid and clumsy. Harry had managed a green sludge by the time Toad Boy blew his cauldron up.</p><p>The weekend arrived; escorted journeys about the place, yes all of them, yes, including Potter, who walked, always, with his right side to his own and his mangled left hand side shown to the whole world. Nobody liked having to go so slowly. Harry was used to being left behind. </p><p>Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. If they had a choice, people avoided him as much as they did the Bloody Baron. </p><p>Still, now Harry knew where he could go. There were little grassy havens sheltered by the great castle.</p><p>If Harry wanted to be left alone to practice, or to read, they let him. He was told to do his homework, and given a very wide berth in the library, when he finally managed to get there.</p><p>It was a problem, the way that Harry was so slow on stairs. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. A real problem. But not his.</p><p>The infirmary was easiest of all to get to, bright white all over, like its own bright world.</p><p>Nothing to be done. Wait to see if he grows out straight. Good food...</p><p>A harness then, to be lifted up by a prefect until Potter learned to do so himself.</p><p>Harry was all strongly focused attention at that. Eager to learn.</p><p>He set several feathers on fire and had lessons to go to again, shuffle-thump and ewwwwww and small, surprised screams when he appeared suddenly around corners. </p><p>It was difficult, handling plants with one good hand. </p><p>"No, let Potter do it himself," Crabbe was told by a wide column of very sensible and sturdy brownish fabric above hobnail boots.</p><p>Harry was slow, but he did get there in the end, a plant in a new pot. His left hand was covered in sap and small red marks.</p><p>He had a point for Slytherin for all his hard work.</p><p>Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. Irritating. </p><p>Harry never had been able to make friends, at all. He let it wash over him. Because now he had a friend, and the fact that she was an owl was neither here nor there.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Flying Hermit Crabs Aren't Much Loved Either</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Flying lessons arrived as another new surprise. Harry barked a command, got on his broom, kicked off at once, and while some sort of fuss was going on far below, Harry was in his element. He was free. He could swoop, and soar, go down low and back up and round and round, sit in place and look around with his one good eye. </p><p>Eventually, he had to come down to earth. Snape was there, and talked Harry into putting the broom away. There were lots of brooms, good ones even.</p><p>"All protected by spells, Potter, so don't even think it."</p><p>Harry looked at <em>his</em> broom and patted it goodbye. Probably, he would never see it again, but he'd had a good day.</p><p>His happy face was apparently even more frightening than his usual one. "I might actually be sick," said Draco quietly. He knew better than to say anything unkind about fellow Slytherins where anyone else might hear. People from other Houses.</p><p>Harry said nothing. He never did. He thought happy thoughts. He had, now, one really good memory. Worth missing dinner for, and he had hot chocolate before bed anyway. Something wonderful had happened, and even if it never, ever happened again, it <em>had</em> happened. </p><p>In his dreams, he was tiny, zooming about a huge house, while giants cooed and clapped. One had red hair, the other black and just like his. Then the red-haired one grabbed him and he woke up. </p><p>It was a new dream, and oddly, he hadn't been frightened, unlike the one with the green light and the laugh. Odd, but, still, just a dream.</p><p>Harry rolled out of bed, pulled on clothes that fit, and got on with his day. He had homework to hand in, and nobody had touched it, and he was able to actually hand it over, and that had happened, so far, with every single piece.</p><p>Even writing with a quill wasn't so bad, as long as he had something to use to fasten down the parchment. One day, he'd use his wand for everything. Slytherin would help him to greatness.</p><p>He was getting used to the lumps around him, and they were better than those <em>other</em> lumps with the red ties, especially Toad Boy, but there was also Pendulum, hand always up in the air at any question. </p><p>No more flying lessons. He was able to fly, and he couldn't fly a broom and also catch anything, since he had only the one good hand, and for that matter, the one good eye. No brooms for first years. </p><p>Waste of space, apparently. Well, he'd heard that one before.<br/>He didn't care. He'd managed to levitate a feather, and fairly soon, would be able to fly all he liked.</p><p>The children decided that the one thing that they disliked even more than the shuffling, lumpy-looking grotesque that was all that remained of Harry Potter, was having that same lumpy-looking boy suddenly drift around a corner and nearly into them. Some shrieked and ran, scattering parchment or anything else they had been holding. </p><p>Some attacked, and Harry would drop with a thump and end up in the infirmary. The attackers lost very many points.</p><p>Harry's fellows thought that sending Harry around the corner first was hilariously funny, and would wait, and even offer sweets. </p><p>Harry went, not for that, but because usually, before he'd even hit the ground, the other Slytherins were attacking whoever had attacked him. Harry was part of a gang. </p><p>He was never, ever, ever to levitate himself around alone, or when outside, but at least he could keep up with the others.</p><p>His homework was fine. His brewing excerable, but so was Crabbe's, and none of them were as bad as Toad-Boy, whose name was Neville Longbottom.</p><p>Harry's wand liked Harry. His owl liked him. He liked being at school a whole lot better than he had ever liked being at home. He studied hard, especially now that he could simply lift books with his wand. He could stick and unstick parchment, sharpen his quill, give quick little cuts when someone bothered him, or simply cause pain with a Stinging Hex. Like with Crabbe, hexes came very easily to him.</p><p>He still had to walk, as much as possible. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. If he wasn't in a hurry, he had to climb stairs, and should try three times a day to get up a flight, so his friends were put in charge of it. Time and patience might untangle his limbs.</p><p>Harry didn't want them untangled. He didn't want them broken all over again. He didn't want his eye poked out with a sharp stick. He didn't want to be forced to talk, to have his thoughts jeered at. </p><p>The Slytherin Common Room was a cool, quiet green haven, and he wasn't the only one who thought that way.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This author's note is dedicated to AndrewWolfe who wrote The Ghost of Privet Drive, a ripping good yarn full of magical shenanigans and law. I wasn't wild about the premise, clicked because of the summary and was hooked by the end of Chapter One. He gives recs a the end of every chapter, a habit I don't always have the energy for. </p><p>Things are looking up for our little hermit crab. For now.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Magic is a Precious And Lovely Thing.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Pendulum, the witch with the arm forever going up in the air and back down again, died, and everyone was very much shocked, because it could have been someone <em>important</em>. The general consensus was that Harry could have dealt with it. Harry had no idea how, but he did go and look up trolls to see what they were, and the spells he would supposedly have used. </p><p>Now that Pendulum was gone, and no longer grabbing the good books and guarding them with her braying self-righteousness, it was so much easier. His friends were actually allowed to leave him there, and some other Slytherin would guide him back. </p><p>Never, ever alone, Potter. Not ever. Not for any reason. </p><p>That left him with a problem when, at long last, the Christmas holidays arrived, and Harry was the only Slytherin in his year who wanted to stay. But, he was alone in his dorm, and had to wait to go elsewhere, and it was fine, actually. No one really cared if he swooped around in an empty stairwell. </p><p>He helped make a spider out of compacted snow, and it went chasing off after Ron Weasley, who shrieked and refused to come outside for the rest of the day. It was brilliant. Harry learned how to make spiders out of snow, or even liquorice, and animate the lumpy things. It kept him busy and occupied.</p><p>It didn't do a thing about the twins, but Harry left them alone and they left him alone. He thought they might be the reason Peeves sent dungbombs his way, but Harry flung one into Peeves' face and made him run off shrieking.</p><p>Harry was determined to do very, very well with magic, because, unlike anything else in his entire life, it did him good and could not be taken away. </p><p>Or so he'd thought. He had to get on a train and, once the train stopped and he got off, he would not be allowed to use a wand again for more than two whole months. Had he been allowed, he could have made the Dursleys his slaves.</p><p>Accidental magic was a loophole, but, well, it was accidental. No wand. No actual spell. </p><p>Harry was back where he had been, and had to start all over again, once he was in his actual bedroom. Just a feather, one of Hedwig's. Patience and calm thoughts, nothing else, at all, just the white feather that was the whole world, and lift...</p><p>It trembled. Possibly in a breeze. </p><p>Harry took a drink of water from a mug and tried again.</p><p>And again.</p><p>And again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Short as this chapter is, it's still too long to be a chapter summary, which I found out by pasting it into the wrong box.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. There is No Lock Set On The Mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Dursleys had been scared of Hermit Crab. They didn't know that Hermit Crab couldn't use a wand. Meals were left for him, big ones. No puddings, and with only one hand, he couldn't get into things easily. So, he made a mess in the pantry, helping himself and, after that, puddings were set next to his meal. </p><p>His relatives appeared as shocked figures that closed doors, leaving Harry on the outside of the sitting room and kitchen, alone in the hall.</p><p>He could go outside. Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump. </p><p>Boys threw stones from a distance and they shot straight back and apparently, <em>really</em> hurt. </p><p>Good.</p><p>He liked that people were scared to come anywhere near him.</p><p>Hedwig wasn't. Nor were cats, and he could sit on Mrs Figg's garden wall and even have some lemonade, and she would tell her neighbour, "He's a good boy, really." But she was telling herself, trying, literally, to stay on his good side. </p><p>The side Professor Snape most disliked. He was far kinder to the freak than to the image of James Potter. Harry had picked that little quirk up almost immediately.</p><p>To make things work without a wand, you had to <em>really</em> want it. It had to consume the whole of your being. Harry couldn't get that worked up about a chocolate biscuit, but one morning he ended up entirely frustrated with a package of owl treats, and split the packet through sheer force of will.</p><p>The same when Vernon had locked him in his room and Harry needed the loo. He'd glared at the door and locks had clicked open and thumped to the floor. All had been hot to the touch and left scorch marks on the door and a patch of melted carpet. </p><p>Vernon did not try to lock Harry away again. According to Uncle Vernon's complaints, whatever 'that creature' had been, it had done its damage and left. Thanks to his magical outburst, Harry knew, now, what he needed to do to get his magical hand back.</p><p>He had to really, <em>really</em> want it, and oh, he did. He wanted to be whole, and for half of that whole to be magic itself, so that his every whim could be realised at a thought. <em>That<em> was greatness.</em></em></p><p>
  <em>
    <em>No need, ever, for his lumpy left side to straighten and leave him weak. It could, for him, get even worse. He was used to dragging it around.</em>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Harry is Perfectly Normal, Thank You Very Much</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry had a list of things to buy. He had a place to go to. He wrote it down and glared at Vernon, until Vernon put him in the car and Harry Potter was left alone in the wizarding world. It would never have been allowed at Hogwarts School.</p>
<p>It was fine. People who might have rushed to the side of his father's doppelganger did not want to go near a lumpen freak. Goblins were uglier than he was, and roughly the same size. His vault was full of gold, and without Hagrid there, he could tell how much there was. He had all day. Several days. He could sleep <em>in</em> the vault as easily as anywhere else. </p>
<p>In and out, in and out, until he had counted every knut, and knew to a nicety how much he needed to spend. He paid exact change for every item, wrapped in parchment. Down here in the vault, as at school, he had two hands. More, sometimes.</p>
<p>His lumpen body was difficult to fit clothes to. A challenge. Without the hurry of hundreds of first-years, Harry had time to have them properly made. Now that he'd counted every coin in his vault, he was no longer allowed to sleep there. Hagrid came and took him from the Leaky Cauldron and put him on a train home with his schoolbooks. He meant well.</p>
<p>Harry came back, forewarned, and found a room to rent in Knockturn Alley, keeping his nastiest face forward. He fit right in here, with the hags and the werewolves and the vampires and ogres. He had no hesitation, at all, in hurting someone really badly if he could, if they so much as reached for him. He left other people alone. Stare, and he stared right back, trying to look <em>into</em> them, the way Snape seemed to. </p>
<p>Staring down a vampire had made the vampire giggle for as much of the evening as Harry was awake. He wasn't harmed. </p>
<p>He knew several words of gobbledegook already, from the ratty little pub that no one decent went to. One of them was a very bad word for human being. <br/>Never get between a goblin and his gold. Easy enough. </p>
<p>Never go out at night in Knockturn Alley on your own, and it amused Harry that Knockturn Alley was, in general, less dangerous than Hogwarts School to Harry the deformed Slytherin. Nor did he have to shuffle-thump around the place, or have only the one hand. Sometimes, he could have his wand be a pair of hands and his thoughts be another, and that was another reason to leave him alone. He was fearless. He bit. He did things that other wizards could not, and wasn't like them. </p>
<p>He could talk to snakes. Boon-companions that did as they were told, and reported back. Harry picked up half a dozen, all small, all highly venomous. Like the broom, they would be taken away.</p>
<p>He had a broom, and learned about portkeys, which he couldn't have until he was seventeen, and the Knight Bus, which he could use whenever he wanted, and they accepted written directions. </p>
<p>So long as Hagrid never realised he was here, life was good.</p>
<p>It all ended because Harry had to go back to Hogwarts, where the really good library was, better than the subscription library, or the library he was building up himself inside a battered book-case he'd bought with a combination of glares, gold and determination to pay only as much as he thought it worth, and that after it was properly fixed. He was scaring off the customers, so in the end he'd had the thing. It had his name carved into it. </p>
<p>The more he used wand-magic, the more difficult it was to make 'accidental' magic work, and the better he could use it once he got over the hump. Accidentally melting skin was new, and the scar was never going to come out, but then the idiot had killed a snake that Harry was quite fond of. That wasn't likely to happen again.</p>
<p>Harry had a home in Knockturn Alley. A real one. People were amused by him, talked to him even when he didn't talk back, and respected his abilities.</p>
<p>By contrast, being surrounded by do-gooder children was deeply annoying - there was Toad-Boy again, still terrified, and Malfoy looking away.</p>
<p>Harry grinned and shuffle-thumped onto the train. He settled down to see if he could make a dried pea bounce from one walnut shell into another. <br/>Hedwig watched, and hooted now and then. She still loved Harry. The snakes were silent, as instructed, all hidden close to his body. It was more convenient, he thought, if no one realised they were there.</p>
<p>It wasn't home, but it was the best path to greatness Harry had yet found.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Maybe the Basilisk Will Eat Lockhart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A great big snake had killed one of Harry's.</p><p>It had been, so far, a brilliant year. Harry could very easily pick things up and put them down again with magic alone. His harness fastened itself on, and he barely needed to try to lift himself around with it. He was able, just, to lift himself by really trying without a wand at all, only a gesture of his good hand. That wasn't as good as a mere thought, but he'd keep at it.</p><p>His broom was his and he could ride it whenever he had free time. Draco had one as well, but Draco's flying was nearly all Quidditch practice, to order, so he could get points. Draco liked the idea of being part of the team, as much as Harry liked being left alone. Flying was the only time Harry was allowed to be actually alone, the only time his body was utterly irrelevant. Harry loved flying.</p><p>Then the whole Heir of Slytherin business had begun, and literally everyone but a few close friends were blaming Harry. Draco knew something, but wasn't telling anyone, and Harry wasn't asking, unlike Crabbe and Goyle who couldn't seem to leave Draco alone on the subject.</p><p>Harry gave them a good smack sometimes to shut them up. So long as it was in private, he could get away with a great deal.</p><p>Such as having a pit of vipers hidden in his underwear, which wasn't helping the rumours about his being the Heir. </p><p>The snakes went out in at least pairs, and one had returned from hunting rats and mice to tell him that the other had been killed by a very large snake indeed, one that smell-tasted very bad. </p><p>Harry had to sit and think what to do. Obviously, have his snakes hunt down by the kitchens, which had always been safe enough so far. Learn about big snakes that didn't even need to bite to kill. Kill the thing.</p><p>He couldn't kill the thing because the Heir of Slytherin had killed every cockerel in the school. Nor was Hagrid keen on getting more if they were just going to be killed in turn, and no, they couldn't live in his hut.</p><p>Hagrid was pretty good at working out what Harry was thinking with his various hard looks. Now that Harry was a little bigger and even uglier, Hagrid seemed to be comfortable again. Like Snape, it was the James Potter side he found difficult to deal with, only in his case, turning from the James Potter side to the freak side made him uncomfortable and not relieved. Start out as a freak and Hagrid was as friendly as could be. </p><p>Harry doubted, very much, that Hagrid was entirely human. No one who was that comfortable around him could be.</p><p>A basilisk had killed one of Harry's pet snakes, and Harry held Draco entirely responsible. He wrote this all in a letter and handed it over, thumping it onto his chest and glaring him down.</p><p>Draco read the note, and the face, and became actually terrified. The Heir of Slytherin had been such a wonderful joke, and now it had all gone horribly wrong.</p><p>"I'll owl Father," he said. Very quietly. Draco was always cock-of-the-walk but the story of the basilisk seemed to have killed that side of him, if only for a little while.</p><p>There was nothing that Draco could do. The smug look was gone, and he was beginning to wince a little when mention of the Heir came up. People still thought it was Harry. </p><p>Lockhart didn't, but then Lockhart was a complete idiot who still had not worked out that no, Harry was never going to come to the front of the class to play a part. </p><p>Cornish Pixies had dropped to the ground with their wings clipped by Harry and, eventually, several others, and been stomped to death by Crabbe and Goyle, and that had been messy, so now it was all lectures from the books, while Harry ignored Lockhart entirely and worked on making dried peas move at his command.</p><p>Again. And again. And again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. It's Not Harry Who Should Have Been Drowned At Birth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a duel and Lockhart was running it, so that wasn't going to be a magnet for disaster at all. Harry still went, because they were all going, but when he was shoved onto a platform, his would-be opponent conceded.</p><p>"I'm not fighting <em>him</em>!' was the digusted exclamation. "He's <em>dark</em>!"</p><p>Blaise Zabini was dark, but never gave Harry any trouble whatsoever. Draco Malfoy was as fair as fair could be, and a frequent pain in the arse in Harry's first year. </p><p>"No takers? Oh well, then, on to the next!" said Lockhart, who was so cheerfully, entirely stupid all the time.</p><p>Lockhart was not going to help with a basilisk, and his snakes were scared to go looking. If Harry met the thing, it would kill him before he could even think. Harry was stuck.</p><p>Keep his head down then. Survive. Unlike every spider in the castle, he couldn't make a run for it and live in the Forbidden Forest. He'd lost another snake that way and was now down to four, none of them now wishing to explore anywhere unless Harry made them. </p><p>Harry wanted, very much, to kill Ron Weasley's rat just to make him cry. It wasn't very nice, but just the fact the creature existed irritated him on some deep level. He didn't like the rat much either.</p><p>This was a little joke he told himself inside his head and didn't share. </p><p>He did his homework - to quite a high standard, apparently, but he just wanted to be able to remember useful things later. He certainly never did anything for the approval of adults. </p><p>Harry couldn't get Ron Weasley's rat but he could, and did, fill the boy's bag entirely full of live spiders during the whole of one Potions lesson, and left early so that it wouldn't be fastened onto him. He could hear the screaming all the way down the corridor.</p><p>Slytherins, who had been somewhat irritated to have to be patient and wait for Harry, found the pay-off very funny, especially as Snape sent Weasley out still crawling with spiders, for all the Slytherins to hoot and cackle at. </p><p>Weasley knew it was Harry, and Harry didn't care.</p><p>Even with that, the Weasleys <em>still</em> stayed over for the Christmas holidays, and to Harry's bewilderment, so did Draco, Crabbe and Goyle. It wasn't to keep Harry company - Crabbe and Goyle were there for Draco, not him. </p><p>Apparently the empty school meant it was time for Harry to go to the Infirmary again, now, Potter, floating silently behind the equally silent Bat of the Dungeons, to be prodded and poked without wasting Professor Snape's time complaining. Since Harry never did complain, Professor Snape got a long, hard stare, and then Pomfrey interrupted them both before either had to see how that would have gone.</p><p>Harry's arm, leg and eye were not getting any better, even with Harry being made to use them as much as he could. The arm was only fitting more into his body over time, impossible to force down a robe sleeve. The left foot was even more twisted, with a hard, round calloused place that touched the floor. The leg moved forward and back, and to the left and back again, and it would bend in the middle and stay like that if Harry made it do so. He did so in order to ride a broom, or if he actually wanted to crouch down. He climbed steps with crunching, crackling noises. The skin on his whole left side was thicker, almost like hide or even horn in some places.</p><p>Harry was going to have to put up with it, but he didn't mind at all. He couldn't have a false eye until he'd grown and it could be fitted. Wouldn't that be nice?</p><p>That might actually be nice, Harry thought, and nodded his assent. </p><p>When he was allowed to use his harness to fly, he became quite zippy, and he was getting the hang of being only just above the floor. His whole left-hand side was his shield against the world. He couldn't see stares, and spells hurt far less on that side than the other. So had the cursed bludgers - well, they'd probably broken bone, but he'd ignored it and healed again, and been left only that much tougher as a result. </p><p>The spells it was safe to use in return for such unprovoked attacks were so limited, though.</p><p>As with every other limitation his short life had provided, Harry simply put up with it, and got back to his practicing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Even Great Wizard Harry Potter Needs to Behave</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cold turned to soggy turned to windy turned, eventually, to warm and even hot, though not really down at dungeon level. Not in the sky either. At a certain height, it made no difference at all - it was always freezing cold. Harry could see far-off mountains, and had even been able to take his telescope up with him and use it to see various things moving about in the far distance. </p><p>He couldn't leave the school grounds, which was annoying, and when he did go flying over the Forbidden Forest, he got into serious trouble, putting up with several detentions of scrubbing different things without magic. It took a whole lot to wind up Snape if you were a Slytherin, so Harry knew he'd crossed some sort of line, and didn't push the matter. </p><p>He wrote a note.</p><p>
  <i>I'm sorry I went over the Forbidden Forest. I won't do it again. Harry Potter.</i>
</p><p>This, he'd delivered in private and Snape had relaxed, once he'd read the note and set it on fire.</p><p>It had surprised Harry that Snape had not once even threatened to confiscate his broom. Perhaps there was more to the man than to other adults.</p><p>Hagrid hadn't either, but Hagrid was only part human, so it wasn't a mystery that he, like Harry, was different and somewhat despised. Harry was actually upset when he found out that the half-whatever had been arrested and thrown into Azkaban.</p><p>He learned about Azkaban, and then the defences he would need if he was ever thrown in Azkaban, which was all too likely. The Patronus Charm and Occlumency. Occlumency, at least, didn't need a wand. The Patronus Charm was very, very difficult even <em>with</em> a wand, although Harry had a <em>very</em> good main ingredient to offer up. The first time flying on a broom and being free.</p><p>Dementors would eat the memory, so... Harry had better become very, very good at keeping his thoughts entirely to himself. He couldn't even get the books until he was out of school and in Knockturn Alley, and then perhaps he'd even find a teacher. Harry was quite looking forward to going home now, and being a real wizard with far fewer limits.</p><p>For now he had the joy of flight and the occasional shriek from students who weren't yet used to him suddenly appearing. And magic, all the magic he could learn, as fast as he could learn it.</p><p>The Weasley twins didn't like their missiles stuffed up their noses any more than Peeves did. Draco was tiresome, winding Ron Weasley up and hiding behind Harry so that spells bounced straight back into Weasley's face, so, as well as learning how memories worked, and how to guard them, Harry was also digging further into how exactly magic moved itself around. He wanted more control. It was probably going to take a lot of practice, Harry thought, doing small things and working up.</p><p>After less than two years, he could already reach ten feet and, with concentration, take the stopper out of a bottle, without any wand at all. He was pretty sure he could master the art of directing Ron Weasley's hexes past him and giving Draco a good shock at least once.</p><p>older Slytherins kept passing him books full of ugly drawings of very bad things happening to people, and they were very funny if Harry imagined it was his relatives, but every one of them needed chanting or strange ingredients, and every one of them stank of being a trap. Harry never once picked the books up to take with him. No one was silly enough to pry into what he was reading so intently. </p><p>Next year he'd have even more subjects to learn, and Draco was very casual about reading out what his father had had to say. "I can learn more important magic at home, so it doesn't matter. Goyle, if you're set on Care of Magical Creatures, then we're learning with you. Potter..."</p><p>Harry gave a shrug and a nasty smile, enjoying the wince.</p><p>"Do as you like, I suppose," Draco said. </p><p>No one else had any thoughts on Harry's chosen subjects at all. Hedwig was glad to nibble Harry's fingers while he thought about it. Prefects Who Gained Power had generally put down for all five, as had the only Gryffindor that most Slytherins could stand. </p><p>It wasn't the sort of power Harry was after, but magic was magic and Draco had an actual point about Goyle. Goyle was living proof that the Sorting Hat lied, since he had all the cunning and ambition of a whelk. After some more thought, Harry bribed Goyle into going in front when they went into Potions, and now Harry could read, undisturbed while hexes bounced around on the other side of the two meat mountains in green ties.</p><p>Draco gave the nod that meant that he was reluctantly impressed, and bent his mind to some cheerful malice against the Weasel. He gave Harry sweets that he got from home and Harry was fine about going to the library the long way round so that they could make some Hufflepuff first years cry.</p><p>It wasn't like having friends, exactly. It was more like being in Dudley's gang. So long as Draco didn't try to order Harry around, Harry would put up with it.</p><p>He was glad that Quidditch existed and that Draco liked it as much as he did, really.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I hope you're all staying safe and well. My thanks to readers who gave lovely comments and made my day. </p><p>Somehow the chapters I have written and formatted to be ready to post aren't the chapters that actually get posted. I can never resist one last revision. Let's hope the story stays coherent, even so. </p><p>As you can see, sadly Lockhart still has not been eaten by a basilisk. If you were holding out for that, my condolences.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Playtime is Over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ginny Weasley died. Dumbledore was sacked, probably forever. Hagrid was released, and glad to cry in Harry's presence, and Harry even patted his hand kindly. And Lord Voldemort was back and Harry had been in his head and looked out of his eyes.</p><p>It hadn't been too bad. Harry didn't want Lord Voldemort to come anywhere near him, given what he did for fun to his actual allies, never mind to his greatest enemy. Still, that was another reason for Harry to keep his thoughts all to himself.</p><p>The Dark Lord had returned. That was the whisper in Knockturn Alley, and people were quite excited. Afraid, too, and giving Harry sideways looks that Harry hadn't been given before.</p><p>Harry took half a pint of his own blood and made the vampire drink it in front of him, then burned the glass and then he had to try to keep the vampire out, while the vampire tried to take him over entirely. </p><p>Some sort of sacrificial magic kept Harry from being entirely taken, which took away the giggling vampire's main source of fun. Nor was Harry sure he'd ever be able to keep the vampire out. Sanguini. They were all called Sanguini. This Sanguini's name was Reynard. </p><p>If Harry could keep a Sanguini out, he could keep out a Dementor, but they might be many years before Harry's mind was entirely his own.</p><p>The more he wrestled with Sanguini, the closer Lord Voldemort seemed to be, but, well, his books had warned him as much. Things would get worse before they got better. </p><p>Snape had come by, looking for rumours apparently, and had ended up tracking Harry Potter, who was not safely locked up with terrified muggles, but in a seedy pub, in one of its darkest corners, and up rather late, because occlumency training took <em>hours</em>.</p><p>Sanguini was occasionally catching glimpses of the Dark Lord's mind himself, and this was as apparently rewarding as the blood had been. Within the strict terms of their overseen contract, Harry got along with Sanguini quite well, although they were not yet on first name terms. Reynard called Harry 'Little Morsel' and Harry simply glared at him, slammed the contract down and took his seat each evening after Reynard had already dined.</p><p>And, apparently, in front of Snape, they <em>were</em> on first name terms. Snape was going to interfere, apparently. Harry did not want him to...</p><p>Such closeness was how vampires esnared victims. Harry stopped listening and began, once again, working as hard as he could to shove Sanguini out. He had to really <em>want</em> it, and to be stronger than Sanguini himself.</p><p>Snape got Harry's attention at long last. Harry gave him a questioning look.</p><p>"You cannot stay here."</p><p>Harry showed the contract.</p><p>"You can get that from me," said Snape, after reading it over twice.</p><p>Sanguini looked at him for a while, then giggled. "No, I don't think so," he said. "One of your little snakes, is he? I'm not bound to not hurt you, Severus, so I suggest you go."</p><p>"Are you bovverin' the kid?" asked Harry's favourite ogre, the one with one tusk much larger than the other. </p><p>"You may come with me if you wish," Snape offered Harry. He was a pillar of darkness topped with grease and a nose but no sneer. No real expression. He was being polite. </p><p>Harry considered the offer, and decided to take Snape up on it. He did not offer Sanguini any manners to be a foothold into his mind, not that it was not currently an open book to anyone who decided to drop in.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. We Mustn't Kill Muggles. Even Those.</h2></a>
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    <p>Snape had a whole lot to say, once both of them had a room together. Harry was absolutely not leaving the safety of Knockturn Alley and being locked away. He'd ended up leaving before he cut his uncle's throat. He wondered how, exactly, he was going to convey that to his Head of House, but Snape picked it up anyway with a penetrating look. </p><p>No one said a thing about a twelve-year-old boy going up to a room with a man who had picked him up at the bar. That sort of thing happened all the time, just not usually to boys that looked like Harry. These boys-for-sale were looked out for, or very occasionally eaten as easy prey if they became a nuisance.</p><p>Harry was not easy prey, and <em>here</em>, he could use any magic that came to mind.</p><p>"Do so, and you will very much regret it," Snape told him. "Fortunately, the Dark Lord is not currently hunting you down, but, Potter, he will. And then he will kill you."</p><p>Harry nodded. This was none of it news.</p><p>"Your protectors downstairs will not be able to save you," said Snape.</p><p>This was not news either.</p><p>"He cannot get to you if you are living with your relatives."</p><p>Harry drew a picture. A fat man with his head cut off. </p><p>"If you restrained yourself around every Gryffindor who—"</p><p>Harry shook his head very definitely, enough so that Snape was listening. Harry had to use a charm to do the ginger, a ginger-topped stick-figure schoolboy with a pet rat - the rat, just a few simple lines, came out surprisingly well. He pointed to his uncle and gestured a slice at his own throat, then to Ron Weasley and did a 'maybe so' gesture with his hand, and shrugged in indifference. He glared at the fat man.</p><p>"If... someone were to talk to them..."</p><p>Harry pulled out one of his hidden knives and stabbed it through the picture. No. The picture was actually rimed with frost.</p><p>With all the care of quite a polite deadly little monster, Harry put his knife away again without ever once letting the point show towards Snape.</p><p>"Killing the muggle is not an option— no, I sympathise, Potter, I really do," and Snape actually looked at Harry's left side and back at Harry, and swallowed. "You would kill him?"</p><p>Harry nodded. It was, by now, a simple fact. He also drew a sleeping boy and a fat man with a gun, and a fat man holding a skull-and-crossbones bottle and dripping it into Harry's food. </p><p>"Has he done those things?"</p><p>Harry turned his cheek and pointed to a recent pockmark. </p><p>"Then we have recourse. If you will show these pictures to the D.M.L.E. - Potter, you are entirely a wizard, they will listen. They may not like you, but they will listen. I will go with you."</p><p>Harry gave him a sad, lost look, but went with him. Snape would have to find out the realities of life the hard way, and then Harry would be next to a corpse and have his wand snapped. He was too young for Azkaban, so there was that, at least.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. His Scars Aren't as Good as Mine</h2></a>
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    <p>And Harry met Moody, an auror on the cusp of retirement, who was <em>nearly</em> as ugly as Harry himself, and thus seemed very comfortable, and his trainee, who went literally white with shock when Harry turned round at her friendly greeting, even to her very hair. She was scared of ugliness, while Moody didn't care.</p><p>She'd get used to him, but it wasn't a good start. Moody didn't like Snape either, one little bit, but Snape went and had a private talk with him, and then Harry told his story again, with the pictures. He wrote a neatly-written statement and the White Witch brought him tea, although now she was an embarrassed pink shade. So easy to read. </p><p>Moody had a wonderful eye that Harry could look at forever. He wanted one just like it. Harry had better scars - Moody hadn't even begun growing horn to try to defend himself, he simply had some melted-off flesh. </p><p>They had the intractable problem of putting Harry Potter in a home with Vernon Dursley when one of them was probably going to die, and probably not Harry, and where Harry could not even safely eat, which was part of the bare minimum of 'home'. </p><p>He'd have to stay in one room, have meals brought to him and be able to leave through the window, by broom and wearing an invisibility cloak.</p><p>Harry already had an invisibility cloak, but he wasn't about to mention it.</p><p>Harry would need to be back and in bed before midnight, and take his lessons with Sanguini in Mrs Figg's house and under Moody's supervision. Breaking a vampire contract was not wise, and all concerned were very upset that Harry had signed one in the first place. It wasn't illegal to want to learn to defend your own mind. It wasn't even against the school rules.</p><p>No one was happy, at all, but Harry could put up with it.</p><p>Moody was very much less than happy at Harry's living conditions, but there wasn't a lot to be done about it. No one could force the muggles to give Harry a decent bed, and it would have meant letting them anywhere near him anyway. </p><p>Harry was going to burn this place to the ground, he decided. Only... this was less inconvenient than being expelled from Hogwarts, but he wouldn't always be at Hogwarts.</p><p>Hedwig was safe and his snakes were safe and Snape wasn't entirely useless after all.</p>
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<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Out Through Beautiful Red Eyes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry learned an important lesson that first evening, when Snape went to visit Lord Voldemort and actually offered the information that he'd picked up Harry.</p><p>"You had not mentioned him, my lord, and you were pleased I was where you placed me, and loyal," Snape explained. "So I put him back where the Headmaster wanted him to go. We have had to protect the muggles from his temper -  the Headmaster is afraid that the boy would rather be your ally than your enemy."</p><p>Voldemort had an idea. "Very well," he said. "He shall be nurtured as a potential ally then, Severus. I will put out word that he is not to be harmed. Which vampire was he with?"</p><p>"Sanguini, my lord. I did not get his first name. The boy has a contract. Cast iron."</p><p>"Get his first name. I shall want to speak with him. Stay close to the boy. Tell the old fool that you are trying to guide him into the light."</p><p>"Yes, my lord."</p><p>"You may leave."</p><p>A reprieve, to leave and not be tortured. Severus should be grateful. As for the boy... willingly or not, he would one day cross Voldemort's path, and Voldemort would kill him.</p><p>Harry waited out this vision as he had waited out many other terrible things, and was able, at last, to sit within his own mind. Instinct told him to not try to close their connection until he could push Sanguini out.</p><p>He'd had worse days. Here in his room, at least, he was safe.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Proper Motivation to Study</h2></a>
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    <p>Nothing, now, at all, was stopping Harry from going out shopping to get books, but, in order to show willing, he asked Snape to go with him. If Snape was going to be forced to be nice to him, Harry was going to make that as easy as ever it could be. </p><p>Things were <em>somewhat</em> complicated by the fact that Sirius Black had escaped Azkaban, ready to make a wonderful scapegoat for all sorts of schemes. So, he wasn't actually a Death Eater then, but everyone believed he was, except Death Eaters themselves.</p><p>Seeing a grim in Little Whinging itself was rather alarming, but all it meant was <em>a</em> death, not necessarily <em>Harry's</em> death. It could just be a big black stray dog. And then it went again.</p><p>So now occlumency was more important than ever, since there were going to be Dementors nearby, and people hated Harry, so probably someone would send some after Harry. He snuck back to his usual haunts, and wasn't stopped - so long as, like Cinderella, he was back home and in bed before the clock struck twelve. Snape seemed to think it was very important, and so did Moody.</p><p>It meant Harry could get a head start on the Patronus Charm. He'd been thinking about it for months and had the memory, but actually casting it...<br/>You had to really <em>want</em> it, and at least a white wisp was better than nothing. Harry would have to really want it, a lot, for a long time.</p><p>Given that he could now reliably hover a dried pea above the palm of his hand, Harry thought he would probably get there.</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Good Wolf</h2></a>
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    <p>Poke. Poke. Poke.</p><p>Remus Lupin was very tired and rather ill, and took some waking, but Harry simply kept going, poking with a finger.</p><p>Poke. Poke. Poke.</p><p>Lupin sighed and looked at Harry, and was very startled for a moment, but recovered very quickly. He'd been warned, then.</p><p>"What is it?" he asked.</p><p>Harry knew of Remus Lupin, who had been bitten by Fenris Greyback, a werewolf who had leered at Harry until an ogre had backhanded him and then Harry had melted a hole in his nose. Fenris and Harry were not friends, but one day Harry might beat the werewolf badly enough that Greyback became servile.</p><p>You had to be firm with them.</p><p>Harry gave Lupin a strong look, then held up a book set to the Patronus charm. He tapped it.</p><p>"Dementors, here?" said Lupin, getting up.</p><p>Harry shook his head. He grabbed a newspaper turned to a relevant article. Then firmly tapped the book again. </p><p>"I will be glad to teach that when we arrive at school, er..." said Lupin.</p><p>Harry held up his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook, opening it to the pages upon werewolves. </p><p>Then back to the Patronus charm again. </p><p>The door was locked, and Harry wasn't going anywhere.</p><p>Harry had something like a globe of glowing cloud by the time the windows frosted over, a feat that Lupin was very impressed by. He hadn't protested that he wasn't a werewolf, or exclaimed, he'd simply given in. He was <em>naturally</em> servile, which was going to perhaps be very useful. His own patronus was, unsurprisingly, a wolf, which Harry made him display, not letting him run off to talk to the driver. His non-existent left hand clutched Lupin's robes wandlessly without Harry's conscious volition, and he pulled the man back and to the lessons again. </p><p>"At least let me give everyone chocolate."</p><p>Harry took some of the chocolate for himself, then went around helping Lupin hand it out, since some students genuinely did trust Harry more than this shabby stranger.</p><p>The wolf went off with a message, which Harry thought was absolutely fascinating, and then they went back to the lesson, until Lupin called it a day.</p><p>"That's enough now, Harry," he said very kindly. "You've done all you can for one lesson and need to rest."</p><p>Harry patted his hand and handed over the rest of his chocolate, then went off to go and visit his friends.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Wow, I was not kidding about the short chapters, was I. Still, I had fun writing it and I hope you'll have fun reading it.</p><p>Comments, as ever, very welcome.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Perhaps Friends?</h2></a>
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    <p>The word was out in Knockturn Alley that Harry was untouchable. Now that Harry was back at Hogwarts, he wondered whether such word had reached Draco yet, or whether he was still Daddy's little boy.</p><p>Still Daddy's little boy, apparently. Clueless. Thirteen and he still knew nothing. </p><p>Harry could kill Draco without really breaking a sweat and was fairly confident of his ability to take out the older students too. He held his Patronus Charm steady through the school gates having demanded, and got, a carriage all his own. </p><p>Weasley had lost his pet rat over the summer, and even a picture in  the Daily Prophet hadn't brought word. It had been a slow news day, but the next day Sirius Black had escaped, and now the news, or consistent lack of it, was all focussed on him, the stupid rat forgotten.</p><p>Toad-boy had not changed at all, even slightly, and was still absolutely terrible at Potions. </p><p>The library was a safe, quiet place to go, when Harry could get an escort there. </p><p>Certain students spoke in excited whispers and gave him looks, or broke out into fierce, angry fights, jumping apart when he turned up and pretending nonchalance. All in the Slytherin Common Room where no one could see.</p><p>Draco was a Voldemort loyalist, and so were Crabbe, Goyle, Nott and Parkinson. The rest were neutral. Harry didn't have any actual friends, but he did have a broom.</p><p>Outside this dark green space of secrets, Harry had loyalists of his own, such as Susan Bones and her best friend Hannah Abbott, both scared of his freakish side, but trying to be good, be kind. Professor Flitwick. Possibly Luna Lovegood, but Harry didn't know what she'd meant by him eating wrackspurts for power. Surprisingly, Professor McGonagall, who regarded him with horror and distaste but did her best to ignore that and to be 'fair'. </p><p>All other 'nice, normal' wizards and witches disliked him, or ignored him. </p><p>Or ran screaming if he suddenly floated around a corner at him. That was never not funny.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Constant Rage and Self Control Work Well Together</h2></a>
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    <p>Draco kept taunting Harry, downstairs in the Common Room.</p><p>"If it were me, I'd go out and hunt him down," he lied. "Funny, isn't it, that even your own Godfather hates you? Did you know he was your Godfather? Did anyone tell you?"</p><p>That was the gist. The tone and malice had been the background noise of Harry's life ever since he could remember, and he'd learned to not mind at around the same time his arm was broken and then kicked and he'd found the trick of putting part of himself away somewhere else, and then, eventually, the trick of not caring about what anyone else thought except himself.</p><p>Harry ignored Draco and concentrated on magic, which was his main ally.</p><p>His pet snakes were allowed to stay where they were comfortable, and brought very little news. Hedwig never talked. But they liked him, and didn't get upset if he didn't talk.</p><p>Voldemort was doing nasty things and working on a project that was nothing to do with Harry, and aware of an event arriving at Hogwarts after the Quidditch World Cup, which was a thrilling opportunity to get hold of Harry and kill him.</p><p>Harry could see no way out of it, and so the days of his life were numbered, probably. Barty Crouch Senior was under the Imperius Curse, his son, also Barty, probably Barty Crouch Junior, was taking care of it.</p><p>Harry could hardly go to Snape with this, given that Snape was an active Death Eater, so he was stuck. He didn't trust the Headmaster at all - no one in Slytherin ever did. How Dumbledore was even back in the school, Harry didn't know, since he'd been sacked forever, but he'd probably just used magic to make people do what he wanted, and then lied about it. Hagrid adored Dumbledore, just as much as he adored his dangerous magical creatures, so that was a lesson.</p><p>Susan and Hannah worked with Harry in Herbology lessons and sometimes worked with him in the library. </p><p>Third year schoolwork was more complicated and more difficult than second year, and Harry struggled to understand it. The actual spells they were allowed to try weren't that hard, but there was a lot of theory and no time for anything else except for food, flying and sleep. His new teachers were much the same as all the others, being horrified and disgusted, or brave, or trying to be kind. Trelawney, especially, was loud about the tragedy of it all.</p><p>Harry did the work, and wrote down his predictions, even when they didn't make sense.</p><p>Animagery sounded worth looking into, so Harry took even more care over that topic than the rest. </p><p>Lupin was teaching a lot about magical creatures, along with some useful spells. Harry had no time to improve on his Patronus Charm, not right now. It was good enough. Harry always stopped when his work was good enough. </p><p>Care of Magical Creatures was with the Gryffindors. Harry's book was a broken, whimpering thing, but stroking it to open it still worked, and Harry did not attack the animals they were learning about. He liked the interesting ones that were more of a challenge.</p><p>Muggle studies didn't teach him how to subdue them or ward them off, so he dropped the subject even before he began, which, looking at his work load, was just as well. Harry had his limits, apparently. </p><p>The thing was, casting spells by rote with a wand was not the same as understanding it well enough to work without a wand, which took extra time, and so Harry was scrambling all the time to keep up. </p><p>Astronomy had its upsided. It let him know when the moon was full, and where the stars were for when he was flying around at night, so that he didn't go out over the Forest during those winter months when sunset was hours before curfew. He had no need, at all, to know how many moons Jupiter had or what they were called. He could look them up if he needed to. </p><p>He was, at all times, very angry about one thing or another, and packing it all away and not showing it, until his magic was ready to lash out at any excuse. Keeping a complete control of it was hard work. He did not let his animals suffer because his life was hard. He wasn't a Dursley. He wasn't like Draco Malfoy, who was trying to get Buckbeak killed, and when Harry wanted to shake Draco and drag him to Hagrid's, Snape stepped in.</p><p>Hogwarts was too useful to leave.</p><p>Harry had done what he could, so when Hagrid moped about it, Harry left. It wasn't as if he could <em>do</em> anything, and he had his own problems and he'd had pets killed as well. There was still a basilisk around, though at least there were roosters again. Stupid Hagrid had made everything worse.</p><p>Harry did as he was told in lessons, even when they were learning about stupid, useless things, and Hagrid should be grateful for that.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Do As You're Bloody Well Told</h2></a>
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    <p>Lupin was ill the day after the full moon, so Snape was in charge of teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, which apparently made some difference to people. Snape was interested in teaching about werewolves, which was only sensible. Harry's chapter about werewolves was already very well thumbed, so he took the time to work on outstanding homework instead, since he couldn't drag out animagus theory where Snape, the Death Eater would see. Malfoy and Parkinson told on him, of course, but Harry was unmoved and immovable.</p><p>"Potter has very clearly already done the work, as would have the rest of you if you were even slightly observant," Snape told them. "Manage your own studies and leave other students to theirs."</p><p>"Father will—"</p><p>"Malfoy." Flat, cold, unkind.</p><p>So, whiny tantrums and some sort of fuss, a distraction. Harry had loyalists who would get him to the library, who didn't show their loyalty beyond that. </p><p>Christmas. No Weasleys. No Malfoy or Parkinson - precious few Slytherins at all. </p><p>No lecture about the library, so Harry simply went, and like that, the prohibition on wandering around alone was gone. Although, not during term time, apparently. So long as he was in Slytherin, he moved about in a group.</p><p>Harry revised useful potions he was going to need later. Looked up charms. Learned the theory for conjuration. </p><p>Transfiguration was so bloody difficult. You had to know what you wanted, to the exclusion of all other ideas. Harry was not in the habit of wanting much at all, but he did want power over his own magic, very fiercely. He had to do the stupid stuff to get to the good stuff, so he was stuck with it.</p><p>Harry wasn't sure what the point of Christmas Dinner even was. It wasn't as if he was in the mood for it, although this time there was no Malfoy to taunt him about lack of presents. He pulled crackers and got useless junk he didn't want. Bribes for younger kids later. </p><p>He actually hated Dumbledore, who was refusing to even look at him. It wasn't his own hatred, and Voldemort was easily as strong as Reynard Sanguini. </p><p>Harry demanded whatever lessons Snape could give, and flung the man out of his mind at once, so that was that. </p><p>Snape, thrown to the floor, got up and stroked his lips. "I'll need to go to the Headmaster," he said, and that was when Harry found out that Dumbledore was Snape's ally, behind Voldemort's back.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. You Get What You Pay For</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry had Remedial Potions, to do with his being one-handed. It was a lie - Harry had lessons from Reynard, who had not been able to take advantage of the situation as he had hoped, and was now stuck with actually doing Harry some good. Dumbledore went up a notch in Harry's estimation.</p><p>By Easter, Harry had his mind all to himself, and Reynard had a thousand galleons of Harry's money, that Snape had to go out and fetch. The subject of Harry's going to Hogsmeade hadn't even come up. Wandering around shopping with a load of kids didn't exactly appeal. Hogwarts wizards weren't really his people. Too nice, too easily shocked, too judgemental. Harry was as the Dursleys had made him to be.</p><p>Now Harry had no idea what Voldemort was up to. And Voldemort had no idea what Harry was up to, except through spies. A weight had been lifted off, that Harry hadn't known was there. His wandless magic was smoother now that nothing was fighting it, which didn't mean it was easy, at all. Still, he could float his harness around the place and still do magic, and by happy coincidence, given his cover story, he could stir with a rod and slice with a knife as well as anybody else. </p><p>Snape was actually, genuinely pleased, taking Harry to his office to let him know, as well as telling him that he would, of course, be going to stay with the Dursleys this summer. And that he was not to stay in Knockturn Alley.<br/>Harry glared.</p><p>Snape actually flinched a little, shifting a piece of parchment, holding it between two fingers and putting it to one side. "You are not stronger than the Dark Lord, Potter," he told Harry. "He has spies there and will come for you."</p><p><i>He didn't the last time</i>, Harry wrote, on parchment Harry had taken from Snape's desk. The back of some first year's essay on flobberworm mucus. Sheer focus made words appear, unfortunately with scorch marks.</p><p>"Detention for ruining another student's essay," said Snape, undoing the work and leaving an irregular black stain. He did, however, hand parchment over.</p><p>
  <i>He didn't the last time.</i>
</p><p>"No, but then the last time, he did not have his Death Eaters at full strength."</p><p>Oh, yes. That. One of the odd side effects of all the fuss in January had been that Toad Boy had become a great deal more focused and no longer gave a hang what other people thought, but Harry had been wrapped up in trying to get control over his own magic.</p><p>Harry considered things. He was very short on options. Snape was a Death Eater, so all this concern about keeping him out of the Dark Lord— out of Voldemort's hands was confusing.</p><p>Harry left. That writing trick was worth practicing. It would save him so much bloody time.</p><p>Now his head was his own, and now he had enemies he couldn't easily check up on, Harry supposed he would have to go and try to get to know people who wouldn't ever feed him to an acromantula for any reason, even by accident. People he went to school with, even.</p><p>Not Draco Malfoy, who was looking forward to being a Death Eater, very much.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Who's a Clever Boy Then?</h2></a>
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    <p>Susan and Hannah let Harry go through their Muggle Studies notes, in case there was useful information, and there was, in the section called Getting Around, which Harry 'helped' them to revise, and then he worked through other notes as well, enough to pass his boring exams so he could keep on taking all his O.W.L.s.</p><p>Harry also nodded politely to Toad Boy, who nodded politely back. So Harry sat with him in the library and did homework, and now he had another loyalist.</p><p>And then there was Luna. Everyone else called her Loony, so Harry didn't, almost from principle. She kept looking more around Harry than at him. About two days after Harry beat the Sanguini out of his mind for good, Luna told Harry he was comfortable to be around.</p><p>That dd statement earned her stares and whispers and taunts, nothing unusual there. But Susan and Hannah and Toad Boy, who had a name, it was Neville, all thought so too, apparently. Harry agreed with Luna - it <em>was</em> very like having friends.</p><p>Scabbers the rat was back, and so was the Grim; multiple sightings and yes, probably something to do with Harry. Harry was no seer, except that he had a strong intuition that dropping Divination would be more trouble than it was worth. </p><p>Sirius Black was also in the area, and Harry doubted that this was a coincidence. Grim, Murderer - and Snape's hatred of the man was actually genuine, visceral, so intense that Harry trusted it - and Rat.</p><p> </p><p>Murderer Sirius Black ripped his way into the Gryffindor Common Room. The next morning, Harry sent him an owl wishing him well in his hunt for Ron Weasley's pet.</p><p>Hedwig did not come back with a reply.</p><p>There was a vast quantity of daylight around, which was good, if the vampires were going to be flocking to Voldemort. Hagrid was still a soggy, sobbing mess about Buckbeak, no use whatsoever. The Grim was interested in Harry. It was thin, gaunt even, with staring fur and burrs. Harry watched it quietly, and it did not attack, and eventually left, slinking back into the forest.</p><p>No one died, which made it a bit useless as Grims went, really. Harry read some books at a table he'd cleared with silent hexes, and became suspicious. </p><p>The Grim ate food, putting itself in Harry's debt, so it was a real creature of some description. Harry found out what Fang ate, and bribed someone to get him something similar. No questions asked. Just words burned into someone's notes, and they hurried to take his coin to Hogsmeade and seemed grateful for the chance, even. </p><p>Harry mulled this over for a while, but the soggy little bag wouldn't keep and he had things he had to do.</p><p> </p><p>He began befriending the Grim, which was clearly starving. Given a choice between chopped liver and lungs that turned Fang into a drooling, hungry mess, and a boring dinner of boiled potatoes with lots of butter and a pair of fried eggs, the Grim went for the eggs and potato. The more human the food, the more the grim wanted it, most especially if Harry ate some first.</p><p>It was nervous as Dark Creatures went. It always looked out for people coming.</p><p>Given a time and place, the Grim met Harry there, tail slowly waving. Clean of burrs at a gesture, but it preferred Harry to have his wand pointed away from it.</p><p>It also vastly, vastly preferred Harry's right side, always sitting there or dragging the plate to that side. Fang loved the whole person. Buckbeak did. All animals did.</p><p>"Snape's a Death Eater," Harry told it.</p><p>The Grim growled.</p><p>"Don't growl at me," Harry said.</p><p>The Grim stopped. </p><p>Harry considered his options, handing over a marmalade sandwich as he did. Sirius and Snape were deathly enemies, and the Grim was hunting the Rat, and Harry was missing something, somewhere, but he didn't know who was on what side. One miserable choice remained, but it was the only sure one.</p><p>"We need to go to Dumbledore," he told the Grim. "I can't <em>make</em> you, I won't drag you or anything." His words were very slurred. He never talked because otherwise nasty kids imitated him, 'huh wuh wurrr...'. He said it again, as carefully as he could. "He's the only one Voldemort is scared of."</p><p>The Grim backed away.</p><p>"Fine then. I'll still feed you. Stupid mutt."</p><p>He did, too, but he turned his back on the Grim. Until one day the Grim nudged his hand from behind, and Harry rubbed his head, and felt angry because his eyes and throat hurt. He didn't take it out on the Grim.</p><p>When he went back to the school, the Grim followed, at his heels.</p><p>"No, not here. Snape would get you. I'll... bring Dumbledore out.  Same time and place tomorrow. I don't know when I can get him. You understand?"</p><p>The Grim nodded.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Finally I can start putting in content for the relationship tags! Bonus Luna. </p><p>Happy New Year to all my readers!</p><p>I hope you enjoy this offering. Comments make me :D</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Needing Someone Hurts</h2></a>
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    <p>It took a week to see Dumbledore, who looked Harry in the eyes this time.</p><p>"What did you need to see me about, Harry?" he asked. </p><p>Harry wrote his piece on parchment. <i>I think that Sirius Black is not a Death Eater and is living as a big black dog and trying to catch Scabbers the Rat. I think the rat is a Death Eater animagus.</i></p><p>"That's very interesting, Harry. Whatever makes you think that?" Dumbledore asked.</p><p>Harry slowly, reluctantly, wrote down all that had happened to lead him to that conclusion.</p><p>Harry needed the dog fed, whatever Dumbledore thought. It hadn't tried to hurt Harry and it was starving. If everyone had made a horrible mistake, then the least they could do was feed him.</p><p>Harry learned how to get to the kitchens and about house-elves, who were loudly eager to serve and hand over food, and Sirius came down there to live. </p><p>One day he was gone. Harry didn't ask. He wasn't told anything, either.</p><p>Scabbers was gone as well, having run away, again, and Malfoy was making the most of it.</p><p>Harry held onto magic with a fierce hunger that pushed him through the very, very boring work he needed to do to learn new, better magic. Harry passed all his exams, even Arithmancy, and managed a full corporeal Patronus a few days later. </p><p>Better still, the dog came back, and Harry held it tight and went and got it food. Sirius held him, while a hermit crab rattled around and around them, brandishing its pincers. Harry liked to bury his head into his godfather's arms and just say nothing, while he was held. He hadn't known he wanted it until it happened. </p><p>He ran off after, floating faster than a dog could run, not wanting to face him. It was a complicated memory, not the simple joy of his first broom flight.</p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Honestly, Screw Dumbledore</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry went back to the muggles, in a fouler than usual mood, and when Vernon started on him, slapped him across the room, until he cowered in fear while Harry smashed plates next to his head. Harry slapped his face with magic, deliberately and shook him by the cuff of the neck, lifting him and dropping him, and shoving him out of the room and slamming the door shut.</p><p>After that sudden, very loud fight, Harry got himself tea. His hand was shaking, but his magic wasn't, not even after he threw up. </p><p>He ate from tins, or snatched food from the Dursley's plates. A terrified Aunt Petunia served out more to her two fat darlings. Dudley was terrified and hated him, and Harry didn't care. They were all on some stupid diet, but Harry shook them until only Dudley was on the stupid diet, and he hit Dudley with the frying pan when he objected, actually using his hand and glaring at Petunia while he did.</p><p>"Reap what you sow, bitch," he told her, and nobody made fun of him for slurring his words.</p><p>"Mblewp," said Uncle Vernon.</p><p>Petunia cried, great noisy sobs, and so did Dudley, but the diet stayed. They didn't give him any more trouble.</p><p>So, that was his first day back home. And then Dumbledore came and told him off for harming muggles, while Harry stared in shock.</p><p>"So, they can starve me and that's all right is it?" he said.</p><p>"No, it is not all right, and I will have a word with them—"</p><p>"People already <em>had</em> words! Over and over! They don't behave unless you scare them, it's all they bloody know! They aren't like house-elves, Dumbledore, they aren't <em>nice</em>. I'm doing loads less than they did to me. Look at me, Headmaster! Look at what they did!"</p><p>Dumbledore gave him a sorrowful look. "And how far will you go, Harry—"</p><p>Something about his tone caused Harry a deep revulsion.</p><p>"I'm not going to kill them. Uncle Vernon will kill me if he gets a chance, it's why I steal food from their plates. All I did was hit Dudley with a frying pan, that's normal, and shake Uncle Vernon around and slap him, and that's normal. I didn't slice them open or burn them or break their bones. He shot me in the face with a gun, and you just act like I'm the bad one."</p><p>"Harry, I know it must be difficult to show kindness to those who have done you so much wrong—"</p><p>"They don't <em>want</em> kindness. They don't. They're horrible if I'm nice. If I shake them up they behave and leave me alone. It's what they do to people. It's what they know. I'm just making them behave themselves, I'm not hurting them much."</p><p>Harry got up and made tea again, his back to the Headmaster, two cups, and they did, indeed, sit and drink together. Harry's thoughts were wrapped in steel and, very soon, ice.</p><p>"Just decide whether you want to be friends with them or me," he said, after this pause. "It can't be both. They hate you because you have magic. They want you to be dead and not exist. Just because they're muggles doesn't mean they're nice. They're the sort of muggles that beat up other muggles for fun. So if you tell me to be kind to them..." Harry was stuck, there. There wasn't a lot he could actually do.</p><p>"Will you harm them if they leave you alone?"</p><p>Harry shook his head.</p><p>"Is that a promise?"</p><p>Harry nodded.</p><p>"Very well. I will, still, have a word with them, Harry, but I will take on board all that you have said."</p><p>Another nod.</p><p>"And, now, thank you for this tea."</p><p>Harry could hear his aunt and uncle sucking up to the stronger wizard, who did, in fact, scare them enough to behave, thus giving lie to Harry's words, but Harry took the time to get himself more food. He was constantly hungry. <br/>All the help from the Ministry had dropped away as though it had never been, and not only did they not offer to help him, they warned him that if he was caught casting spells, he'd be expelled and his wand snapped. </p><p>Mrs Figg was still willing to be friends with Harry, in fact she was the only friendly face around, and she could get him food that definitely wasn't poisoned, and didn't make fun of the funny way he talked. And of course Hedwig still loved him, a small miracle Harry wasn't ever going to get completely used to. His snakes obeyed him and liked the warmth, it would have to do.</p><p>Other than that, he was in hell until he got back to school. Sirius had actually written, saying he couldn't see Harry, it wasn't safe, and Harry had to stay where he was, and Sirius couldn't tell him anything.</p><p>Harry wrote back and told him to get knotted, if he was just going to abandon Harry to stupid muggles who hated him. <i>You only wanted me because I had food,</i> he wrote. <i>Some friend you are.</i></p><p>So, very suddenly Harry had a pet dog, who whined at him, until Harry rubbed his head and took him home.</p><p>"Behave," he said, when the dog first encounted Aunt Petunia. It was to both of them and it was a clear command.</p><p>"Bloody hell, Harry," said Sirius when they got upstairs.</p><p>"Don't you start," said Harry. </p><p>"So... er... how are you?"</p><p>Harry shrugged.</p><p>Sirius turned back into a dog again. They were both a lot happier.</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. The Monster He Became</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry had a ton of homework, and wanted help with some of it, and that was when he discovered he had a friend and mentor in Sirius who, very soon, didn't mind his worst side at all. Dudley had a great big bite on his bum, so clearly he'd been up to something unpleasant, and Sirius was shocked at the precautions Harry had to take to not be poisoned, but overhearing his uncle planning...</p><p>Apparently, Sirius was in loads of trouble for going to Harry's side. He was supposed to stay at his mum's old house, a complete dump, which Harry wouldn't be able to see, because magic. Sirius had to hide because the Death Eaters knew what he looked like. This was because Peter Pettigrew, rather than being dead, was a rat animagus, which had Harry mentally ticking a box on a list in his mind. Dumbledore was sorting it all out.</p><p>Harry was far more cynical than that. Dumbledore was a complete pain in the arse, and was probably only feeding Sirius because he had to.</p><p>Snape was in the Order, no surprise there.</p><p>"Really?" said Sirius, surprised.</p><p>"I knew he worked for Dumbledore," said Harry. "He works for Voldemort as well. Whatever keeps him alive."</p><p>"Sounds about right," said Sirius.</p><p>Harry grinned at him.</p><p>"Then there's Mad-Eye Moody..."</p><p>Harry finally told an adult about Voldemort's plot to kill him. Apparently, it was taken seriously. Not only that, but Sirius had the same attitude towards the Order that Harry did, because it was that or lose Harry entirely, and Harry had been clever, working out who Sirius was, and kind, and he half-looked like James and would have had Lily's eyes if Dudley and his friends hadn't poked one out with a stick trying to make him scream.</p><p>"But after that, he was scared to go anywhere near me," Harry said. "So he threw stones at me instead."</p><p>"God, Harry, no wonder you hate them."</p><p>"I can't fight Dumbledore. I was happier in Knockturn Alley. I have real friends there."</p><p>"In Knockturn Alley?!"</p><p>"It's comfortable," said Harry. "I'm not a freak there, Sirius, I'm just Harry." He hated the way the name came out. Siwooss. "I miss my friends. I was safe there. Only stupid Voldemort's recruiting everyone and he's more powerful than me."</p><p>"Not everyone, Harry."</p><p>"Dumbledore won't give them the time of day. He hates people like that. Like me..."</p><p>"He doesn't hate you, Harry."</p><p>"Then why won't he protect me? Why do I have to be nice to them? Why does he take their side all the time? Why does Malfoy get away with everything and nobody takes my side? He doesn't like people like me."</p><p>"He doesn't like dark wizards."</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>"Harry, you're not a dark wizard."</p><p>Harry looked at Sirius. "I'm not like normal people and they don't like me. Because I look like a monster. But monsters like me and they're nice and kind."</p><p>Sirius sighed and turned into a dog again, and Harry stumped around Little Whinging, shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump, pinging back rocks towards their throwers, even when their throwers had been cunning and lobbed the rocks over the fence and run away. Sirius didn't dodge fast enough and was hurt enough to limp, while screams went on close by.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>More than halfway and still no 'Emilio', I know. Let the journey be the destination! </p><p>Comments are life.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. They're Just Nervous, That's Why They Bite</h2></a>
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    <p>Life in Little Whinging went on as normal. Shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump, moving around a village full of muggles that hated him, not allowed to touch them because, well, if Voldemort and all his Death Eaters were afraid of Dumbledore, Harry wasn't going to do anything stupid. Not to mention they all wanted his wand snapped. </p><p>The attacks had done him some good, thanks to magic protecting him. His skin was tougher, and, under a hard shell, was becoming more flexible, at least around his mouth. It all looked like scars, or scabs.</p><p>Children fled at his approach, and stared from afar, and people went hastily inside, or pretended he wasn't there. A boulder thrown from behind a hedge rocketed straight back over and caused an 'oof!' sound that was adult.</p><p>Shuffle-thump. Shuffle-thump.</p><p>"You belong in a hospital!" a woman shouted at him, shrill with fear.</p><p>In other words, a perfectly normal day, one of many that had Sirius snapping at his allies, who were watching and not doing anything to help, because they didn't want to be caught. </p><p>There was a sudden ping of air rifle pellets, one hitting Sirius and making him yelp. He shot off, and there were yells and screams and silence, then he was back, growling to himself.</p><p>Out to the limits of Little Whinging, then back again and off the other way, and someone, a parent of one of the rough crowd, ran into him with a car, leaving Harry as a broken figure after a screech and a crashing thump. The car came back for another go, and stopped suddenly. The engine went pink, pink, pink and hissed. Someone was groaning.</p><p>Harry's homework was all done, so he lay quietly and let adults get on with it. Shocked wizards and witches gathered. Sirius was hurt as well. The general orthodoxy that muggles were harmless was severely challenged. Harry felt he'd made his point and that talking would do him no good at all. It wasn't as if he felt pain. He left his body to get on with it, and resisted attempts to heal him - the foreign magic felt painful, intrusive. They couldn't force open his mouth to get potions in.</p><p>Mostly, Harry slept. It wasn't safe to take him to St. Mungo's, so he was in Hogwarts infirmary, severely distressing several house-elves. </p><p>Sirius was beside him, in better shape, slinking back to Harry's bed whenever Poppy's back was turned. </p><p>Harry healed, slowly. He was lumpier and tougher when he was done. Two right fingers were also deformed. His body told the tale of violence done to it. His magic, forced to by need, worked as hands. He wasn't going to die, not to this, and he might be severely inconvenienced, but his magic did as he needed it to. Better now than before someone had crashed a muggle car into him.</p><p>He went from the Hogwarts Infirmary to Order Headquarters. Sirius was right, it was a dump, a long flight from Hogwarts and in a stinking muggle street with thumping music, that reminded Harry somewhat of Knockturn Alley, only with worse company.</p><p>Sirius was beside him, and defended him from the Order when Harry went to the screaming portrait, ripped its curtains open and began slapping it with his magic over and over while it screamed. They'd tried everything, apparently. </p><p>Harry had a loud hobby, one that was severely irritating to everyone, but he didn't do it if he was in the kitchen eating a meal, or asleep, and they worked around him and tried not to wake him up. </p><p>Dark magic spat onto him, opening a long thin black scar on his left cheek, that looked like a slot, but that was only because Harry was getting somewhere. His magical fist kept pounding, his magical fingers digging, then prying between two 'lumps', while dark magic would have taken out his eye again if he'd had one. There was a small circular splat on his right side as well, high up on the forehead.</p><p>The screams were like some animal being tortured, and there were low gutteral noises, and behind ripped canvas, a black void.</p><p>"I think we can take it from here, Harry," Sirius said, a hand on his. On his left hand, because that was the side he was on.</p><p>Harry was quite proud of himself, really, even with the fierce, ongoing headache down the left-hand side of his head.</p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Seriously Messed Up</h2></a>
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    <p>If Sirius drank, Harry snatched it from him and drank as well, which was normal manners in Knockturn Alley if your friend was being greedy and not sharing. Then he handed it back. </p><p>If Sirius hid with Buckbeak, Harry joined him, and still stole his firewhiskey, and drank until he was sick and passed out, in a pile of hippogriff dung.</p><p>Harry was suddenly out for all the booze he could get. If he drank enough, he didn't have any pain at all, and nothing mattered. He did what he could to get hold of it, then drank it wherever he stood.</p><p>"Harry... I don't want you drinking so much," Sirius said, worried and angry.</p><p>"I'm just doing what you do."</p><p>"It's not healthy."</p><p>"So? Who cares if we're healthy or not?"</p><p>"Harry..."</p><p>"It feels good. You know it does. Nothing matters if you drink enough."</p><p>No booze allowed in the house now, apparently, and consternation from twittering, unimportant people about school. About Hogsmeade.</p><p>Sirius and Harry took to destroying the house instead, ripping it apart. Harry wasn't allowed to touch the dark stuff, but whatever Sirius was doing, so was he, and he listened and didn't judge.</p><p>Without wallpaper, with all the furniture turned to matchsticks, with the carpet as tiny shreds, and all of it crushed and put in rubbish sacks to be burned, they had a room with no trace of the Black family.</p><p>Harry was done and had to go to school, having failed entirely to win friends. He didn't want pity, and he didn't want to be ordered around.</p>
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<a name="section0027"><h2>27. The Storm Before All Those Other Storms</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry arrived at Hogwarts in viciously terrible weather, hungry and distinctly alone. That he had a host of new scars was not lost on anyone. These gouges and divots the portrait had splatted into him were not healing back. Or not healing back as quickly. It was someone else's magic, and Harry was hoping he could throw it off, like occlumency. It itched, and that didn't improve his mood.</p><p>According to every single teacher, and the teachers were all being very boring on the subject, Harry had O.W.L.s to do, and a deadline to get them done in. Two years. Harry had a more pressing, more literal deadline, in June, because all hope that Dumbledore would look after him had fled. He had one year to learn all he could. Then Voldemort would be after him.</p><p>Harry was not afraid of Snape. Not now. He was still afraid of Dumbledore. <br/>Malfoy got his legs slapped out from under him when he started on Harry, and made threats, and Harry just did it again harder. Faced with pain, Malfoy buckled under. Harry gave him his wand back.</p><p>Hogwarts was kinder, by far, than Little Whinging, and then, too, he could move around as he liked, light as thistledown. Thanks to hands of pure magic, Harry was entirely functional. He had a Firebolt broom to fly around on, which was his primary joy in life. Sirius's was apparently to sit and watch him in one of their hidden places.</p><p>Harry, in lessons, was silently attentive or busy making notes. He gave everyone the creeps, but he didn't make trouble and they knew better than to start something. Hagrid was cheerful again and his good friend, and Harry liked the Blast-Ended Skrewts, flames, stingers and all. He held them on his knee and fed them by hand, and burned his fingers, but not so very much.</p><p>"Trust you to like monsters," said Malfoy with disgust. His commentary was so much hot air. </p><p>No malicious taunts that Voldemort was going to kill him, so the Dark Lord fans Harry was forced to live with clearly knew nothing at all. </p><p>There were suddenly rather a lot of strangers in the school, who reacted to Harry like any other normal human beings, with horror and disgust. Half of them sat at the Slytherin Table, all squeezed up at one end, ignoring Harry, which he was fine with. </p><p>Harry's name came out of the Goblet of Fire, and Harry got up and went off to the library. </p><p>Snape chased him down and displayed his own authority as a person in charge of Harry's life. "Potter, you must go down to the room and join the other champions."</p><p>"I'm not the Headmaster's performing dog, Professor Snape," Harry said. It had sounded clearer and crisper in his head. "He was supposed to protect me."</p><p>"It's not his fault if—"</p><p>"Barty Crouch Senior is under the Imperius Curse by Barty Crouch Junior. Voldemort wants me to get the trophy so he can kill me. He knows that. So no I am not doing what the Headmaster says. He never looked after me ever. I'm done with dancing to his tune. He doesn't care about me and I don't care about him."</p><p>Snape sat down opposite Harry. "Potter, look at me."</p><p>Harry did, keeping his freak side more turned towards Snape, but meeting his eyes.</p><p>"There is a magical contract that is enforced on champions. It's not something you can get out of."</p><p>"Then let's see what it does," said Harry. "I'm doing my own thing until I'm expelled or thrown in Azkaban because I care as much as he does."</p><p>Dumbledore had a way of getting attention, but Harry had been terrified before and yet still doing his own thing. Nobody was going to drag him kicking and screaming around Hogwarts, and so the whole matter was quietly shelved.</p><p>Harry still went to lessons, as before, and studied whatever was most interesting to him - the material, or his own work. He just, absolutely, visibly no longer gave a damn about authority, and if Hannah and Susan twittered at him about it, he got up and left. Neville, Luna, and now Dean never commented on schoolwork at all. </p><p>He had allies, more so now than before his visible negation of the ceremony. Nobody, at all, doubted that someone had put his name inside the cup. Nobody in Slytherin doubted that Dumbledore was his enemy. </p><p>The Weasley twins, of all people, hunted him down, arranging a meeting through Neville and thus through Hannah and Susan. Harry went. </p><p>They handed him a map, shared the password, and Harry stared at it. He was actually impressed.</p><p>He knew who the Marauders were, but he wasn't a person who went around sharing things. It was a work of art in every sense. He stroked it gently. His father had held this, used it.</p><p>"I'ww wook after it," he said, and they didn't laugh.</p><p>"Well, we reckon we've memorised everything, so we're done with it," said one.</p><p>"We thought you'd find it handy," said the other.</p><p>Perhaps they were bad people, and Harry rather thought they were, but they definitely weren't the worst and he would rather have them on his side than not. Harry nodded and put it away, then shook hands, and collected two more supporters. </p><p>They were right, it was useful.</p>
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<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Screw Your Stupid Task</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry was in Knockturn Alley the next night, apparently much missed. There were a lot of smiles that weren't a display of teeth. Reynard was being respectful, which meant Harry could get something he wanted. </p><p>Loptusk was actually friendly, clapping him on the back and getting him a drink, sharing food that Harry could get through best of three. A real, actual friend who knew what was what. Harry felt warm inside. He belonged here.</p><p>A wizard slipped away to report and Harry turned him into a set of broken bones and dumped him at the back, and not one person questioned the action. It was considered polite to report <em>after</em> a target had had their meeting.</p><p>Harry bid a fond, reluctant farewell with people who never laughed at his words. He drifted around the alley to pick up supplies, and cash, and some books, and went back to school. Snape didn't <em>officially</em> know, and if he made a fuss, it was because he was very, very stupid.</p><p>Instead, Snape warned him that he would be forced to compete in the accursed Tournament, don't think you can get out of this one Harry. Harry shook his head, not being a part of this conversation even a little. As with vampires, he wasn't going to concede a single point of agreement, or even consider that the curse <em>might</em> work.</p><p>In fact, from that meeting on, the dark magic on his face began melting away, as slowly as any healing wound, but it was, at last, healing. It itched, and caused a horrible distraction, but there was nothing to do about it, or the way people put Harry's distraction down to fear of the stupid curse which didn't even <em>exist</em>, it was stupid.</p><p>Harry found that his magic, perhaps worn down by sheer practice, was starting to do as it was told. He had every charm down pat as soon as it was introduced, and his creations in Transfiguration, while ugly, were what they were supposed to be. He switched bits and pieces, and species, because he needed to do it to pass his exam and learn tricks that were a whole lot more useful, and dangerous. This beginner-magic was all very stupid. </p><p>He was far stronger if he didn't care than if he hated, and dwelling at <em>all</em> on the stupid things people said, even for a moment, was only giving them room inside his head. He had the knack, finally, of not being angry or disgusted by everyone around him, and it was very peaceful. Luna gave a little nod, and Susan said Harry looked a lot happier, which was nice that she'd noticed, and that all his friends didn't talk about the Tournament at all now, and only what the foreigners were up to.</p><p>On the day of the First Task, he went down to watch with everybody else, and everyone was watching him. He found the dragons absolutely fascinating, and very much wanted to be on the ground facing one, but then he'd very much wanted to be friends with Reynard. To look and not want, that was the trick.</p><p>The idea slid away, like film on a soap bubble, leaving a sensation like cold grease. Harry doubted that it was from the cup. Somewhere on his right. Harry didn't know if it was the Imperius Curse, because he'd never let Moody try to cast it. He'd just left, because letting people you had no reason to trust cast things on you was stupid. He'd had no trouble from anyone for that one, not even a detention. Possibly he'd lost marks that day, but that was very much not his concern. He'd been told, right at the beginning, that his House was like his family, and that seemed about right so far. </p><p>The First Task with the entirely uninteresting big firey lumps was done, and they could all go in and eat. Except, Professor Moody was screaming, so, the sensible thing was... to go in and eat, since he had no visible attackers and something nasty might soon follow. He could be there to meet it, or he could be inside where perhaps there were roast potatoes and lots of gravy.</p><p>The exodus of everyone who didn't have such sensible thoughts was rushed, people barrelling into Harry's back and bouncing away hard, setting off a general stampede and a loud, screaming awfulness he walked away from. Dinner was severely delayed, but nothing was attacking the Slytherin dining table, and the food was there eventually. So that was the day of the First Task over, and nothing of value had been lost. Professors came and went all the time, it was practically normal.</p>
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<a name="section0029"><h2>29. He didn't Go There For the Hugs, You Understand</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry knew who had put his name into the cup. He worked out that if he'd agreed to go, he would have somehow been signing the contract, and that he would have been there on someone else's behalf, and the name for someone doing something instead of you was substitute. Only apparently, no, it was proxy. If it was to do with a contract? Proxy.</p><p>So, Moody had assumed Harry, who feared Dumbledore, would go and be his proxy, getting him out of the contract created by willingly putting a name in. Or Moody had become his proxy when Harry had disagreed.</p><p>He told all this to Sirius over dinner in a cave on Sunday.</p><p>"Not Moody," Sirius told him. "Barty Crouch Junior, using polyjuice."</p><p>"Oh, right. But Dumbledore still— no, Snape did. Snape tried to make it happen. But Dumbledore didn't <em>stop</em> it happening. If I had believed I was supposed to compete I'd be dead now. Like when vampires are friendly and you're friendly back, they crawl into your mind and magic. Never give them anything without a contract."</p><p>"I won't." Sirius looked doubtful.</p><p>"I told Snape I'm doing whatever I feel like until I am expelled or go to Azkaban," Harry told him. "I told him I'm not Dumbledore's performing dog. No offence."</p><p>"None taken." Sirius tore a lump off some bread, chewed and swallowed. "So, I hear you've been down to Knockturn Alley."</p><p>"Yes, but how?"	</p><p>"Dung Fletcher. Well, what's left of him."</p><p>"He did something stupid," said Harry. "I thought he was running off to get Voldemort. Nobody's bothered me about it at least."</p><p>"Well, Dung didn't exactly bother to report it to the rest of the Order. You're one scary wizard, Harry."</p><p>"I'm nicer than Voldemort."</p><p>"True."</p><p>"Do you think I'll go to Azkaban?" Harry asked. He was working on a wandless Patronus Charm, but it wasn't anywhere near happening. His wandless magic was all first-year stuff. Magic instead of hands, stronger and tougher. "I don't go around doing bad things," he added. "Just, people hate me and want to hurt me. Ever since I was a baby."</p><p>Sirius swallowed a few times. "I don't know," he said after a while. Harry was not the sort to respond well to comforting lies.</p><p>"People like me more now I walked away from the Tournament," said Harry, fiddling with the woollen tartan picnic blanket. "Because I didn't do what Dumbledore said. Not just Slytherins."</p><p>"It was brave," said Sirius.</p><p>"The Weasley twins gave me a map," and Harry showed it, and from then on they communicated in writing, for clarity, and Harry left with homework to do and a keen insight into the Homunculus Charm. And several warm hugs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I hope you all enjoy this chapter.</p>
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<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Magic is Just the Best Thing Ever</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry went to the Yule Ball with Susan Bones. Neville went with Hannah, and Dean went with Luna. They were all friends. Harry had well-fitting formal robes, over those parts that were normal, and bright silver chainmail over the rest, which looked striking. He had a silver mask over half his face, and apparently looked... well, not handsome. But, like he was normal and wearing a costume. Slytherin witches had come through for him, and even told him he'd look better when he was older. Given the mess that growing up was doing to Malfoy's face, Harry believed them. They weren't friends with him, but they were scared of him and they did want to show off, and Harry couldn't argue with the results. </p><p>He still couldn't dance, and Susan wasn't going to ask him to. He could, did get drinks, mixing them up in case of poison, because people would save others when they would not save him. Snape would have a bezoar. If not, Harry had one, straight from the Hog's Head Inn, apparently, and sold to him by a reputable apothecary.</p><p>He was kind, because Susan had been kind, and then she kissed him after he saw her back to the barrels, which was all sorts of confusing, but nice. He'd only gone as a friend and now she was kissing him. It was a very good costume, Harry thought. Only she was willing to kiss him the next day too. He didn't know why, and nor did she, but they were boyfriend and girlfriend now, and none of Hannah or Neville or Dean or Luna were surprised at all. </p><p>Harry decided he could put up with this, pretty easily actually.</p><p>Going out with him meant being bullied horribly, and when she couldn't do it any more, he felt a dull ache but understood. He'd been stupid to think he could have a normal life. Now she was only hanging around him to scotch rumours that he'd done something monstrous, but they weren't going out, and he told her to go out with someone else, someone nice, to get some peace, and to stop giving him guilty looks, because those were more horrible than just not going out was.</p><p>He liked her so much for getting it, and wandering off to try something with Justin Finch-Fletchley. She was happy, and Harry cared that she was, and was glad. The pain... well, life very much was pain.</p><p>Only it turned out she wanted him after all, and liked the secret things his magic could do in dark corners, under her clothes, until she was getting too noisy.</p><p>She learned to be quiet and Harry could do a lot in secret corners without removing any clothes at all, and so could she. It was... as good as flying on a broom, and a hell of a lot more secret. And yet, still, not quite enough, but he absolutely was not going to try to get her clothes off.</p><p>Still, now he had a cast iron reason to want to be in Hogwarts, other than learning magic as rapidly as he could.</p><p>The wandless Patronus Charm wasn't getting anywhere at all, but his snakes were able to wander about again, and Harry didn't have to see anyone if he didn't want to.</p><p>He and Susan found so many secret corners, and got very good at vanquishing common household pests together. They never saw any of the creatures Luna kept going on about, but Harry hadn't seen owls or unicorns before Hagrid turned up, and there they were. </p><p>Being able to avoid everyone was nearly the same as not having enemies at all, and Susan <em>really</em> liked him, which was the best feeling Harry had ever had. He made sure she studied hard too, so she'd stay alive longer.</p><p>Probably, Harry was very happy. He didn't have a lot to compare it to, so he didn't know, but all the signs pointed that way. It felt good, anyway.</p><p>Voldemort was a long way away, just now, and Harry was content to let Dumbledore keep taking care of things.</p>
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<a name="section0031"><h2>31. One Very Good Week With Nothing Terrible Happening.</h2></a>
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    <p>Harry didn't want to take Susan to Madam Puddifoots in February. He wanted to take her to a cave to meet Sirius Black, which was a thrill quite beyond words apparently, and made Susan give him a very fierce hug to his good side while Sirius clamped onto the other and bounded about waving his tail and clamped on again until Susan let go, crying and laughing and hugged them both. Harry had a good one there, apparently. Which, well, he knew that. </p><p>After they said their goodbyes, it seemed to be a very good idea to Harry to go to the Hog's Head to get a shot of fire-whiskey each— well, then, butterbeer for Susan. He cleaned the bottle himself, and watched nobody wanting to give him any trouble. </p><p>They weren't, really, his sort of people, and he was more comfortable at the Three Broomsticks. He made another ogre friend, Big Gob, sheltering Susan beside him and getting any drink she wanted, while he had butterbeer. <br/>Then they went shopping, like ordinary students, and back to school. This was a deeper, richer memory to fuel his Patronus. He thought he might manage, one day, to get it to spring forth from the palm of his hand. <br/>Practicing was soothing, but the carriage ride back wasn't the time for it. He sent Dementors packing and let Susan fasten onto him again while he thought about things.</p><p>No one had given Harry any trouble all day. He had a signed permission slip, he was allowed to go. Professor Snape might not like it, but he was staying out of the immediate power struggle, because it was now clear to everyone that Harry was going to end up able to hold his own with Voldemort, and possibly one day even Dumbledore. </p><p>Harry worked very, very hard at his magic and he learned about it and tried to understand what it was doing, which was the true key to power. All those boring books about the fiddly bits and the annoying words were there for a reason, and when <em>Susan</em> said he was quite the scholar, Harry didn't mind at all and felt his face go hot. This year was very complicated in terms of feelings.</p><p>He'd missed a trick by not getting Lupin thoroughly under his thumb, but he would get his own pet werewolf who did as he was told. Or perhaps he had Sirius Black, but that wasn't the same as feeling magic responding to magic. These sorts of people were loyal and reflected their owners...</p><p>Susan wasn't someone who would understand his having a pet werewolf, but she was someone who would go with him to odd and scary places and at least try to get along. She was brave and might not die very early if she studied hard. He tickled her to bring colour to her cheeks and make her think of him all night, holding her close as if he was protecting her. Feeling so powerful and in control was heady stuff, and she wasn't complaining. </p><p>"That's enough," she said when the main entrance came into view. He stopped immediately, and kissed her lips instead. She liked it when he helped her down, his hand up, but her weight actually supported by his magic, so that she could be elegant.</p><p>People were horrible. Harry was not. He had his champions in Hufflepuff, especially having, apparently, bravely risked his life to let Cedric Diggory claim all the glory.</p><p>Given that Cedric apparently owed him one, Harry learned from him how to turn a boulder into a labrador, or, well, werewolf, a scarred and snarling red-eyed thing that <em>yes</em> was scary. Less so when it was lying on its back, tail wagging, begging to have its tummy tickled.</p><p>Draconifors was a spell that made a small dragon that could grab, slice, and bite, which was a useful reminder to show good manners. Harry was now ahead on his year, and Cedric had something new to take to the last task, which was by the lake, apparently. Oh, no, <em>in</em> the lake.</p><p>So Harry learned the Bubblehead Charm as well, and Cedric learned to improve it, while Harry beat the crap out of intrusive grindylow. They weren't out after curfew; it was just dark.</p><p>They both had a great deal of respect for Transfiguration, so, while conjuring a glass helmet around the bubblehead was theoretically possible, he was going to check with Professor McGonagall before they tried it.</p><p>By the week of the Second Task, Harry could cast a wandless light spell, and a Bubblehead Charm and had no fear at all of anything in the Black Lake, so, he could swim and enjoy doing it. After a certain point, the water stopped feeling cold, so long as you were all the way in and kept moving around. Harry was very, very sure that this was because they were both wizards. </p><p>The surface was freezing, less so if you were dry, less so still if you wrapped magic around you like a blanket, and then that was a way to stay warm and dry under the lake, but not a replacement for the Bubblehead Charm. Harry didn't enjoy finding that out. Cedric wasn't one to laugh at him and tended to worry, so Harry hoped he would survive and perhaps study with his other friends. </p><p>When he got to his next Transfiguration lesson and had a chance to ask in charcoal text, it was made very, very clear to Harry that he was not allowed to conjure so much as a button, and he did as McGonagall told him, always, so he didn't argue the point.</p><p>"Potter," she said, as he turned to leave her and go and join his peers, heading to the next lesson.</p><p>He turned and gave her an attentive look. </p><p>She gave him a very stern look in return. "Promise me you won't go and try it on your own."</p><p>
  <i>I promise I will not try conjuration or any other new-to-me form of transfiguration on my own. I don't mess about with Transfiguration.</i>
</p><p>She smiled at him, reassured, so he bowed to her and left, wiping his message-parchment clean as he went and tucking it away.</p>
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<a name="section0032"><h2>32. Flying Hermit Crabs Are Fine Underwater</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>People were used to Harry. Harry wasn't a loner, and he had a girlfriend and everything, a fiercely loyal girlfriend, and she was a Hufflepuff and not Dark, but he was also powerful enough to just not care what anyone thought, including even Dumbledore, apparently. He was smart and good in lessons, he was humble...</p><p>Ugly. Freakish. Frightening. He <em>looked</em> Dark. The evil sort, not the ordinary sort with brown skin. He was in Slytherin. And he'd turned against Dumbledore.</p><p>Marked for death by Voldemort, word was finally out about that. Dangerous to be around. And he liked Hufflepuffs, which was a clear sign of weakness. It was pathetic, having to go to Hufflepuff to have friends.</p><p>Opinions were divided, Harry couldn't avoid hearing. People kept on making an effort with him. He was no chattier than before, but he wasn't scared and he wasn't hostile. </p><p>People told him things they didn't tell anyone else, and not even because they were running some sort of confidence trick. He felt safe to talk to, to let hold secrets. He never told anyone else anything.</p><p>He could tell at a glance these days whether he was going to be comfortable, and could relax, or whether the atmosphere had the potential to go sour. People had become interesting, because they weren't <em>just</em> saying stupid nasty things. </p><p>He trusted no one, but he was inspiring trust himself. He had no shortage of people to go down with for the Second Task, Slytherins mixed with Hufflepuffs, and Neville Longbottom, Dean Thomas, Fred and George Weasley and a somewhat reluctant Lee Jordan. And Luna Lovegood, Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe. Every House.</p><p>Cedric went off into murky green water and out of sight, and thus they had an hour to sit out in freezing cold weather waiting for them to come back, and nothing to do but chatter. It... wasn't bad. Conversation about the lake, mostly, a safe topic.</p><p>"Of course, he'll be in trouble if that Bubblehead Charm pops," said Iris Orpington, the 6th year Slytherin witch who had insisted on the mask. She never gave Harry any trouble at all, so Harry didn't avoid her direct look at him.</p><p>Harry shook his head firmly, then again when more people looked his way. He mimed rapping on his own head with a fist, hitting empty air, then sucking his own knuckles.</p><p>"Really?" said Iris. </p><p>Harry nodded, smiling.</p><p>"Did you teach him?"</p><p>Harry twitched his head. No.</p><p>"Cedric's really clever," said Cho smugly.</p><p>Harry nodded and grinned, and looked away over at the dignitaries as if he'd seen something, as a distraction. From then, he was able to let the talk wash back and forth without him. Rather a lot of it was about the evil plot that Fudge was in on, to use the Tournament to steal Harry so that Fudge could take out the goblins unopposed, and then it was about whether goblins were misunderstood or rather nasty. They could be both, said Luna, getting a rare nod of approval from Harry's other friends.</p><p>Fleur had to be rescued from the Black Lake and became very loudly upset about her sister drowning, which was an obvious cue. It wasn't as if rescuing a kid would be hard, and his faith in whatever failsafes there were was zero. </p><p>He shot out over the lake, then dived down, lighting the water around him, searching in around the right area until he heard singing. Down and down, flying rather than swimming, shaping magic so it slid past. He used a conjured dragon as a cutting implement and shot straight up with Gabriel in one magical hand, then along to Fleur. Both Harry and Gabriel and all of Harry's snakes were dry and poor Cedric had been sadly upstaged, but, well...</p><p>On the whole, it had been the right thing to do, Harry thought, and other people thought too. Everyone settled down to watch the lake not doing anything special again. </p><p>Krum won. Cedric was second, to wild applause. Fleur of course was third but forever beholden to Harry apparently. Gabrielle was scared of him, but Harry was given kisses to each cheek by Fleur, and had her voluble gratitude. </p><p>She was pretty and liked him, it was nice, but it was Susan he sat next to at dinner, and went off with into the night after. He slept well that night.</p>
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<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Live Long Enough To Work Up A Good Grudge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the time it was daylight nearly all the time and people were running out of ideas for what the Tournament organisers could do with a magical hedge, Harry had a great many firm friends to share magic with. He had peaceful, actually pleasant conversations going on next to him, that included Cedric Diggory and even Fleur Delacourt, whose vampire-like mind tricks did not affect Harry one whit.</p><p>"You are such a lucky witch," she told Susan, which made Susan very pleased indeed.</p><p>The fact that Fleur apparently found Harry desirable was making Susan's life a whole lot easier. That, and people did not want to piss Harry Potter off, not when he'd made the Second Task look entirely trivial. It was, really, only because Harry had a few simple tricks he'd practiced lots. He wasn't ever letting anybody know. People wanted him dead, always had, and they weren't exactly subtle about it. Susan, at least, had learned to cry on other shoulders about that one after a few hard stares, and so they only ever talked about homework and harmless creatures and the latest outrage from Fred and George, who didn't actually kill people but were starting to make Iris Orpington uneasy.</p><p>Harry thought that actually, Fred and George offered valuable life lessons in not eating any food left lying around and the wonderful things magic could do to a person and not kill them. They tried things out, for fun, and that was also a lesson, but Harry only ever sneaked off for one reason and was never alone.</p><p>Harry went into his exams very confident and did well, and that was finally the end of his having to care, even slightly, about most of his O.W.L.s. He'd worked really, really hard to not actually come top in most subjects, and magic got more complicated every single year. The first year stuff was really, really easy by now.</p><p>Not so much wandlessly. That was very, very hard work as well. He was working on wandless cutting now, without a knife, and so far it was like trying to use a rubber fish. </p><p>The Third Task was a maze full of who knew what. Cedric was as prepared as he could be. It wasn't really a secret that Blast-Ended Skrewts were in there somewhere, beasts of which Harry had no fear at all, since he could tickle their tummies and scratch itchy spots without touching them. Once on their backs, they had trouble getting up again, and that was when you could get them with ropes, the thinner and stronger and longer the better.</p><p>It was evens between Krum and Cedric. Krum was the more powerful, and less squeamish. Harry had a bet on him to win, placed with the goblins, who were scrupulous in such things, and who went to the Hog's Head Inn. He'd done his best to lose that bet, but... Krum had more oomph <em>and</em> the Dark Arts, which Slytherins took as read as being a route to power.</p><p>Harry had been in Voldemort's mind and was very much not at all keen on the Dark Arts at all. You had to really, really want to be more horrible even than the Dursleys, and not being anything like those putrid wastes of flesh was a point of pride to him.</p><p>Harry very carefully thought of things that were not Voldemort and made sure his mind really was his own.</p><p>Nothing to do now, except exist until someone turned up. Harry didn't get why they hadn't gone after him in Hogsmeade, and he felt he should. He racked his brains, considering what the difference was.</p><p>Well... for one, no one would have known he'd gone. Possibly. But that might only work for a minute, if someone else was there first.</p><p>Secondly, he'd be all tired and thirsty when he turned up, and perhaps chewed and burned and poisoned, with broken bones. That did not feel like a consideration. Voldemort was not scared of him.</p><p>No, the plan was to get him out from under the Headmaster's nose... But why? What would a Dark Lord want? Who hated Dumbledore?</p><p>What would someone Like-The-Dursleys-Only-Even-Worse who hated Dumbledore want with Harry?</p><p><em>That</em> was it. Spite. Rubbing Dumbledore's face in it. Harry sometimes had that urge with Malfoy, and stamped on it, which was why his toffees did not have their chewy centres switched out for explosive pebbles. He wasn't like that. He was only a monster on the outside.</p><p>He also wasn't one to give people what they wanted unless there was something in it for him. The Dursleys had wanted fear, and the more they hurt him, the nastier he'd got, until he'd just gone... somewhere and let them do what they liked to a body that didn't feel like his, and from then on it had mattered less and less what they did to him, or thought. </p><p>He'd escaped into exactly those books that drove Uncle Vernon into a frothing frenzy, and had secretly hoped his uncle <em>would</em> kill him, then it would all be over. All his worst injuries had happened when he was hoping that if it got bad enough, someone would do something, or had just let it happen. If he'd imagined himself as a magical hero, magic had come, including the arm that frightened Uncle Vernon so much.</p><p>Now he knew magic would <em>always</em> come, if he wanted it, and no magic he didn't let harm him would harm him, which, if he thought about it, meant he could only be hurt by spells he knew, because he believed in them, but he wasn't giving up new magic for anyone. And... well, his curse-scars from the portrait were gone. Not that anyone could tell, except Harry, whose face it was. It was all about whose magic was stronger, who had the most control. You had to <em>mean</em> it.</p><p>All the gory yuk with dead bodies was unnecessary. That was just to scare people. In that, the gory yuk was just like Harry's transfigured werewolf. </p><p>There was a thought there, about Voldemort, hovering out of grasp, something Harry didn't have a key for. There and gone again.</p><p>Voldemort wanted to get Harry out from Dumbledore's nose, then, and Dumbledore had <em>let</em> him. That wasn't the thought Harry hadn't quite had, it was a return to a previous thought. Dumbledore was going to let Voldemort poke him in the eye with a stick, except Harry was the eye... well, that was all wrong. But Dumbledore was letting bad things happen, that was obvious. </p><p>Harry was a toy Dumbledore didn't care about. Yes. He cared about Dursleys, he didn't care about Harry, he wouldn't lift a finger to help. Slytherins all knew it was true, and it was.</p><p>Harry owed him nothing at all and never would. </p><p>Voldemort wanted to make Dumbledore pay for something, which wasn't all that surprising. If he'd been in Slytherin house, it made sense. Harry wasn't that sort of wizard, but if he <em>had</em> been... well, he'd have had  a score to settle.</p><p>Voldemort wanted Harry dead because he'd shown Voldemort up by not dying, and he was like Uncle Vernon only even worse. So no, he wasn't ever going to calm down.</p><p>No one would ever come and rescue Harry, ever. They'd just kick him and keep kicking and kicking and nothing would make them stop, until he made them stop by making them too scared, and by then it was too late, because that only made them angrier, which meant, actually, the Ministry would throw him in Azkaban at some point, so he needed to be somewhere they couldn't reach. He was probably safer there than anywhere else.</p><p>Which meant he wasn't going home. Nobody could get him in Order Headquarters. Sirius would take him, and they'd carry on ripping out all the horrible stuff. He could try to learn the Vanishing Spell wandlessly, and now was as good a time as any.</p><p>Susan wanted to hold onto him, which was fine, and she didn't bother him when he was thinking, so now all he had to think about was a piece of gravel vanishing from his hand.</p><p>There. Easy. </p><p>Gravel on the ground, not so much. He was going to have to work at that, just as he'd had to work a long, long time to go from lifting peas to lifting himself. It wasn't the same as a levitating charm.</p><p>Reach as if to pick it up. Fold his magic around it. Then cast the spell.<br/>Done.</p><p>A tuft of grass, further away... out of reach... fine, then a mouse. Harry summoned one wandlessly and wordlessly without thinking, and let it run around. He'd just been sure he could do it and there it was. Vanishing...</p><p>As long as he could wrap his magic around it like a hand, he could do it. He knew the spell forwards and backwards and sideways. He'd learned as though Hogwarts might suddenly be snatched away from him. It had nothing to do with the exams.</p><p>He managed to edge a faint scratch on a stone by sawing his magic back and forth. Still too blunt then. Moving the 'blade' as a long line etched a deeper groove. The charm whipped a thin line of magic very fast, with the sole intent to cleave. Harry had the tuft of grass now, and he could slice tops off blades of grass, and cut through matted bits a slice at a time. Only if he cut tougher things, his 'blade' got too thick, to get weight behind it, so he still did not have focus and control. Had Voldemort kidnapped him today, he would not have been ready.</p><p>Of course, he could just dissolve ropes. He watched the tuft of grass dissolve into dust, and then vanished it.</p><p>Fine then, he wasn't <em>helpless</em>. He did have to practice anything he wanted to do over and over, so he was going to have a bag of tricks rather than just willing things to happen. </p><p>Professor Snape was keeping an eye on him, which was reassuring. Presumably a magical contract was involved.</p><p>Harry lifted a stone, turned it to soft goo, like putty, then sliced it, then sliced it into thin discs, and with difficulty repaired it. </p><p>Working on his lap now, he kept fiddling with pebbles, which were easier to see, seeing what it was he could do with them. By chance, he had something looking like a cute little brown cat, which he put effort into and gave to Susan, whose attention was elsewhere. She made a lot of pleased noises and hugged and kissed him, right before this assembled crowd, so he smiled, embarrassed, then went back to his absorbing task.</p><p>Rock to candlestick to rope, and yes, he could slice that. Relashio. He did the transfigurations with a wand. Apparently the secret to silent casting, since he'd asked, was to practice lots and took about six weeks, so Harry routinely did practice. Then he kept it with the incantation, so he could pass the exam. Which he was going to have to do for another year.</p><p>The cup arrived with Cedric Diggory holding onto it. </p><p>Cedric Diggory immediately grabbed hold of Percy Weasley and ripped his arm off, which Harry would deal with thinking about later. </p><p>Harry flew, taking Susan with him, blasting chairs to dust whether people were sat on them or not, to clear a path for the others, then shot back to effect rescues, over and over, leaving Dumbledore to deal with whatever was dressed up as Cedric Diggory.</p><p>An inferus, apparently. </p><p>He'd gone to bed as soon as Susan was safely in her common room, and his friends at least within the school. Anyone he cared about was safe. The rest were so much noise. </p><p>The Daily Prophet told its tale the next morning, and Harry did, for once, want to know what had happened. Then he went and bothered Iris, who owed him one, and they read about inferi, in a book from the Restricted Section.</p><p>Hedwig was a very good friend to have, in times like these. Harry gave her an extra owl treat and was very slow about leaving the breakfast table.</p>
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<a name="section0034"><h2>34. Snape Chooses the Stupid Side</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The news from Iris was that Krum had attacked Fleur while under the Imperius Curse. Harry owed the goblins a hundred galleons. He went off and paid it promptly, and took himself off to Order Headquarters from there. School was done.</p><p>Or not, since Snape came to get him, righteously furious. Harry shrugged and went back to school again.</p><p>"Since when have you been able to apparate, Potter?" Snape asked, in his office.</p><p>"Since I was little," said Harry, which was technically true. </p><p>"In this country, it still requires a licence."</p><p>"Fine, whatever," said Harry with a one-shouldered shrug. "Why the big fuss? School's done, and I'm not going back to the Dursleys. I'll rip the house apart if anyone tries to make me."</p><p>"Then you will end up in Azkaban."</p><p>"If they can catch me. I'm not going. That other house stinks but at least it doesn't have muggles in it."</p><p>"You will fight Dumbledore on this?" asked Snape.</p><p>Harry thought about it. "Yes," he said. "I'm never, ever going there again. I don't care <em>how</em> much he cares about them, they're horrible and they can be horrible somewhere I'm not. I can't even go outside without people trying to kill me. I was in the infirmary for weeks. Dumbledore doesn't care whether I live or die, so why should I care what he says?"</p><p>"Because if you don't, your time at this school will be short."</p><p>"Yeah, yeah, they'll snap my wand. I'm not going."</p><p>Snape drummed his fingers. "He is going to make life very difficult if you don't go."</p><p>"Thanks for the warning," Harry said.</p><p>"You will be an outlaw."</p><p>"That's better than being dead."</p><p>"Every wizard's hand will be against you."</p><p>"No it won't. I know it won't." Harry tuned him out, because it was obvious, now, that Snape would just keep on. Eventually he was able to leave, get his things, kiss Susan goodbye and head off to Knockturn Alley, which was on the whole a great deal safer than being anywhere that Dumbledore could get to him.</p><p>So, now he was on his own. He was also a wanted criminal, so one of the first things he did was find out which local werewolf didn't like Fenris, get him a room and start turning him into his pet, which decisive actions apparently made him a rival Dark Lord to Voldemort. </p><p>Harry had a loyal, fed dog who was also a wizard. Mortimer <em>wanted</em> to belong to him, once Harry's magic had rubbed and stroked him as if he was Sirius. Mortimer was more or less a pet, like Hedwig. An adult wizard, if not an especially bright one, but not an idiot like the idiots Dumbledore had collected. Mortimer might be twice Harry's age, but he was still a pet.</p><p>Harry quite liked how powerful that made him feel.</p>
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<a name="section0035"><h2>35. Screw Sirius Too</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now that war had more officially begun, people were weighing their options. Harry was passed on warning from Loptusk, who could be surprisingly quiet for an ogre whose chest alone was wider than an ordinary doorway. </p><p>Time to leave. Harry hadn't even stayed the night. He went back to Order Headquarters, to make sure the step wasn't booby-trapped, then back to Knockturn, then took Mortimer with him, wrapped in magic, across the threshold of the Big Secret. It was partly to keep Mortimer by him so they were both safer, and partly to see what would actually happen.</p><p>Sirius let him in and there was Lupin, who had his hair rubbed by invisible hands of magic as if he was Fang. While both men were getting their bearings, Harry shot up the stairs, dragging Sirius after him with a hand of magic on his wrist, while shielding Mortimer. They all three ended up in another room before the louder part of The Order realised Harry was there at all.</p><p>"You didn't introduce your new friend," Sirius said, tense and wary.</p><p>"Mortimer, Sirius, Sirius, Mortimer. Mortimer's a werewolf. We're going to clear a room, Sirius, I'm really cross." Cwoss, but neither of these grown adults took Harry the Hermit Crab anything but seriously.</p><p>"Right," Sirius said, his expression... grim. Each time he thought that word, Harry had to stay serious, so he scowled harder, as much as his face would let him.</p><p>"I promised you I'd wait for you to help," he said, facing down his godparent.</p><p>"Right."</p><p>"The Order can do what they like, we're busy." Harry met Sirius's eye with his.</p><p>Sirius let out a breath, and they got on with clearing this one foul pestilential room, behind a firmly locked door.</p><hr/><p>Of course it wasn't, couldn't be that easy, because Sirius could be berated into doing as he was told and had an attachment to some very irritating people who thought the sun shone from Albus Dumbledore's arse. </p><p>Mortimer <em>always</em> behaved himself, didn't widdle on the carpet or do anything to make Harry uncomfortable, and he'd taken his N.E.W.T.s and even passed most of them. He was even better than Hedwig, although Hedwig was Harry's first and most-loved friend and only happened to be an owl, which Harry didn't blame her for at all, or for being completely obsessed with post and not at all interested in interior decoration.</p><p>So Harry and Mortimer kept on working. Mortimer was tense as hell but not responding to general bluster and threats from Sirius's overbearing friends.</p><p>Harry slung dark objects into a corner, not gently, and reduced a glass-fronted cabinet to dust and sand, which was more of a nuisance to deal with than matchsticks. So the table next to the cabinet exploded into little bits, all held inside a sphere of control. Too much mess to vanish, but he could grab handfuls of splintered wood and vanish those. It impressed Mortimer, and even impressed Harry himself, a little.</p><p>One strip of wallpaper was unstuck and ripped to shreds. It turned out that wallpaper was a complete pain in the arse to remove by <em>any</em> method.</p><p>The door was closed. Harry was locked in, with Mortimer, and not Sirius, which was a severe lapse on the decent ally front for Sirius. Mortimer was soon soothed into believing that Harry would stop all the angry adults beyond the door from getting in to harm him, and, as Harry pointed out, escape was only a window away and limbs could very easily be removed from anyone who tried to be a <em>real</em> nuisance.</p><p>Once they were done expressing the full extent of Harry's anger and only had a clean box of a room left, they flew out of a window and went and ate at a restaurant with confused muggle servers who made food turn up and shook off the sense there was supposed to be more to it than that. Harry was suddenly alone in the world except for a werewolf he'd met only the day before. </p><p><em>His</em> werewolf. Mortimer knew what to do to find shelter, he was a very good werewolf. Harry knew what to do when they were in it, since he'd known that he was going to be on his own, and he knew, also, that the world was inherently hostile. He was very well prepared. He knew how to find an abandoned house and stop people coming in, and how to make places to actually sleep, using spells that Harry could also cast pretty easily, making things bigger or softer or cutting them up.</p><p>Temporary it might be, but Harry had a home for the night. His and no one else's - Mortimer, being entirely under Harry's thrall, didn't count. </p><p>Hedwig just turned up, as soon as they were settled in, with a frog in her beak. She was good like that.</p>
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<a name="section0036"><h2>36. I Mean, The Werewolf At Least Washes His Hair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Now that all Harry had to do was wander about and see what his magic could do, he was happy. He walked mile after mile after mile, shuffle-thump, shuffle-thump, and Mortimer never complained at all. He even seemed to like the walk, although he was a very quiet man. Werewolf. An ordinary wizard would not have been so easily tamed, Harry was pretty sure.</p><p>On the night of the full moon, Harry waited outside Mortimer's hole while Mortimer ranted and raved and threw himself at the bars. It was less bothersome than being in his cupboard, because Harry had a packed lunch and something to read if he got bored and could cast spells to pass the time. Not at Mortimer - Harry wasn't cruel. He had some suspicion that the wolf remembered even if the human didn't, but he would have been kind in any case. Kind, but not an idiot: the bars were proof against even Harry.</p><p>Harry didn't get bored. Through the bars, Harry held the werewolf in his own magic, stroking it, soothing it. If it couldn't see him, it became calm. He got to know it, every inch, except the rude bits. He soothed Mortimer too when he woke up, then unlocked the cage and held him close, as if he was actually a dog.</p><p>Mortimer was taking his werewolfism far better than Lupin. He was stronger, too. Not a monster. Not amazingly bright and resourceful and a loss to the wizarding world, but he was experienced at surviving.</p><p>Hedwig was with him. Harry never, ever locked her in a cage, and she followed as she felt like doing so. His snakes were with him, deadlier than ever, four of them again, always warm against his skin.</p><p>Harry had to dress decently to go and see Susan, which meant he and Mortimer both got new clothes, at nine in the morning which didn't seem all that Death-Eatery to Harry. They were out by twelve, eating dinner at the seafood restaurant. Voldemort still wasn't out in the open. The inferus was blamed on Sirius Black, of all people, but nobody blamed Harry and nobody was after him for anything.</p><p>Harry visited the Bones house like a normal wizard. He wasn't actually a wanted criminal. Snape had lied, which really was just typical, and Harry was more disappointed in himself than in his old Head of House. </p><p>Harry wasn't disappointed in Susan, and he liked her parents. Harry could do no more than hug her, but he was allowed to, and if her parents didn't like to see his left-hand side, they <em>tried</em> to.</p><p>"Harry uses his magic instead of a hand," Susan told her parents, with her chin uplifted.</p><p>"Of course," said her father, and her mother's expression. Good people, both of them. Nervous, though. He was, supposedly, missing, so he explained he'd upped and left, in case someone was after him. He didn't want to draw trouble. He had to say a lot of things twice, and they kept filling in once they thought they had the gist, and they grimaced rather than smiling, but they offered tea, lukewarm in case he spilled it, and biscuits, good ones, and stood by while Harry and Susan hugged one another and held hands.</p><p>The news that Harry was alive and very well, thank you, was going to be passed on. Harry stood for pictures with himself holding the day's newspaper, and was allowed to keep it to read later. It wasn't safe to stay for longer than a cup of tea and the time it took to put together a cold sausage sandwich and a slice of cake to take with him.</p>
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<a name="section0037"><h2>37. Harry Is Pretty Sure Loyalty Potions Don't Actually Exist</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry and good, loyal, useful Mortimer skipped away from the Ossary and out to Order Headquarters, to see if Sirius had found a backbone somewhere while Harry was away, or they should just stop being friends right now. </p><p>From then on, Sirius was by his side, but, notably, not at Order Headquarters. Better still, they had mirrors to talk with, so they could go all over the place having actual fun and still be there if anyone needed anything.</p><p>The idea that Harry could call for someone, and they would come, and not make things actually worse, that was new and gave Harry a strange, painful lump in his chest that he was used to from having been hugged and people being used to see him. He thought he'd gone past that.</p><p>Owls were difficult, apparently, or so his friends were telling him. He never had seen anyone in the summer, it wasn't <em>new</em>, and Voldemort was so busy doing something to the Ministry that Harry couldn't really persuade anyone there was a war on. It was as if Cedric Diggory's death was just some unfortunate accident and everyone had moved on already. Going by the papers, Harry was evil and strange and a Bad Influence, so it looked like wizards and witches weren't better than muggles. Harry didn't have to hide from them what he really was, but it was very annoying all the same.</p><p>When Sirius spent his time as a dog, keeping a good eye out for things and sniffing out useful smells, being At Large was so much easier. Yes, some Death Eaters and other enemies would know Sirius on sight, but how many black dogs were there? Harry was more distinctive. </p><p>And yet the kept on walking the Lancashire countryside entirely unmolested. They took to stealing tins to stay fed, which became very, very boring within two days. After a lot of muggle-watching that proved that Muggle Studies textbooks were written by idiots who never opened their bloody eyes, Harry worked out a way to fix their lack of cash. He unlocked and robbed a cash machine after facing it and feeling its insides for a long time. All of the locked things clicked at once, and money travelled down many, many slots. Probably it was a very clever use of a wandless unlocking charm or something. All Harry knew was that, with enough magic, the machine had eventually learned to do as it was told.</p><p>With money, they had any food they cared to go and get. Harry even found places that didn't care how awful Harry looked, because they wanted to be kind. A muggle restaurant close to a large hospital was entirely unfased by Harry's twisted limbs and had nice wide spaces between tables and very kind staff. Harry was not the only strange-looking person there. Here, he fitted in. They knew where he could find a hotel room for not very much, and now he was just one more scarred survivor among many. </p><p>No one recognised Sirius Black either, now he was clean shaven and with short hair. He looked very different to the Monster of Azkaban that was supposedly going around breaking out fellow Death Eaters. Harry was pretty sure he'd have noticed if Sirius had been away that long. Sirius liked to be all but pressed to Harry's side, day or night, and to wallow in the feel of Harry's Patronus, and to chase rabbits because well, the meat's useful, even though he couldn't actually cook. </p><p>They could be anywhere, really. Sirius had done well in his N.E.W.T.s and Mortimer had at least passed. Between them, with a load of books, they could teach Harry all the magic he wanted to know, because it was clear that Hogwarts wasn't going to unless they could send Harry off to Little Whinging to be hurt. </p><p>Dumbledore did not act as if he loved Harry. He acted as though he hated Harry's guts. And Harry, around Sirius full time, had taken his lumps, and done less to attack muggles than Sirius had.</p><p>"Dumbledore doesn't hate you," Sirius said over some fried chicken kievs and garlic mushrooms and jacket potatoes and baked beans. </p><p>Harry gave Sirius a long, hard stare. Mortimer snorted. Even Hedwig gave Sirius a withering look.</p><p>Sirius slumped. "I think he's just convinced he knows best," he said. Dog-loyal. That could cut both ways and was worth remembering.</p><p>Harry gave Mortimer an extra rub of the head. "He doesn't love me," he said. "Or care. You either. We're just... things he can use."</p><p>Sirius was unhappy, but after a very long look, he gave a reluctant nod and Harry stroked his head and was happy to curl up with a dog.</p><p>After a sharply vivid dream, Harry realised that he wasn't going to see Susan, who had loving parents and a home and had actual prospects. He wanted, very much, to go and have one last visit, and spent over an hour just stroking Hedwig's feathers and thinking about it, looking over an achingly beautiful Scottish glen. </p><p>Muggles got everywhere, and they packed up and left. The following morning, over breakfast, they looked out over yet another a very beautiful loch, untroubled by midges because magic, and made their first real plans for Harry's future.</p>
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<a name="section0038"><h2>38. Boats Are A Poor Alternative to Love, Just More Useful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sirius somehow had ownership of a boat, with sails and an engine, as if it had just turned up and needed a home and they should all just go along with that assumption. By the looks of it, actually he'd pulled it from a lake bottom and patched it over, and that was why he was so very proud of himself and not even turning into a dog very much. </p><p>With magic, the boat did exactly what it was told; it was just a matter of paying attention to all of Harry's magic and all of the boat at the same time. Harry thought it was exactly like moving his harness around had been, except it was a boat and too heavy to fly with. Too heavy to fly with <em>yet</em>. Sirius and Mortimer read boating manuals to make sure the boat looked plausible to muggles when Harry was moving it around. Harry wasn't a wanted criminal and it made life a lot easier if he could stay that way.</p><p>After a long week of bothering a muggle librarian, and of Sirius taking the engine apart and giving up, the three wizards went off to a port and bought a much better boat from a muggle who was only too happy to see it gone. In a Norfolk backwater, over several long weeks, they changed it considerably. For one, it no longer took on water. The water now stayed on the outside of the boat and didn't seep in and turn one of the seats into a vile puddle. The engine made the boat able to fly turn invisible. The sails turned themselves. It was very clever work, done mostly by Sirius, and the basis of a very firm friendship between the three of them. </p><p>Harry missed Susan so much it hurt, but now her owls no longer reached him and he knew she was better off wondering whether he was dead, as he wondered about her. She wasn't about to leave home, not when she had family who loved her and cared about meals and clothes and her prospects. </p><p>This was what he told himself at times when he wanted, really, to just snog and fumble around and get himself off. He took to going on long walks and found a magazine to scratch the itch, stuffed in a random hedge like a gift from some minor muggle deity of teenage horniness.</p><p>Otherwise, he had magic, a lot of magic. Sirius was very clever and had done a lot of things, and Harry was willing and ready to learn all of it.</p><p>Each full moon, Mortimer changed behind rock solid bars in a cage, and was soothed by magic from Harry hiding behind a rock-solid Disillusionment Charm. Mortiwolf didn't mind Sirius as a dog, and he didn't mind Harry as a crow, so that was easier. They just had to be where no one else was going to be.</p><p>Once the boat was fixed to be just the way they liked it, that was very, very easy to arrange. They could go anywhere, and had fun racing muggle aeroplanes, the keel barely touching the water. They laughed in stinging salt spray.</p><hr/><p>Harry studied as though his life depended on it, which it did. There was a new Minister for Magic who had even worse friends than Sirius, so much so that Harry was forced to admit that, had he not been a <em>complete idiot</em> or, to reluctantly admit, had he not suffered under Dumbledore's controlling neglect, he would have taken Dumbledore's side. He could agree, also reluctantly, that those flocking to his support had their reasons.</p><p>"I've chosen," Sirius said, over and over, to reassure Harry. "I'm with you all the way."</p><p>Harry was an outlaw now, and being actively hunted. In fact, the stories and pictures made it clear that probably a lot of people would think turning Harry over to the Ministry was only sensible, even if they <em>were</em> any better than muggles, which they demonstrably were not. </p><p>So Harry and Sirius, Mortimer and Hedwig and four snakes sailed off to sunnier climes. </p><p>They moved only at night, with Harry's magic feeling for rocks at the front. He flicked off barnacles that tried to grow, and gave the entire boat a good scouring now and then. Its name was Bumpad, but it still wasn't a 'she', it was a thing.</p><hr/><p>The cash machine trick always worked, it was just a matter of not being caught and finding a nice full one. They exchanged stolen money for new at post offices. Sirius could watch a wealthy person take out cash, summon the card and take more out himself at a busy place, in case they created a trail of empty cash machines. They could <em>all</em> get into a locked, closed restaurant and help themselves to food. They could all cook over hot coals or a muggle camping stove.</p><p>Becoming invisible was a priority. Apparently James had had a cloak he'd inherited from his father. Harry had inherited money, but nothing else at all. Casting the Disillusionment Charm was a matter of learning theory that Sirius barely remembered. Eventually it clicked.</p><p>Harry vanished his bones and regrew them and it wasn't fun. Not just the pain, although he had six long nights of sweating agony and being at odds with Sirius and Mortimer and only able to stand the company of Hedwig and his snakes. The other pain was from not being himself any more. Harry liked his rough side. It had been his shield against the world. It had shown him who was likely to cause trouble. Now, because of the war, he had to let his left side be thin and easy to hurt. He had to see people smile politely and have no idea if they would suddenly be nasty later. </p><p>Just to make really, really sure he was not going to be found, he made his hair curly, turned his skin brown, wore a headband, bought a new wand. The three wizards all looked somewhat similar, and that was that. They'd vanished. Hedwig was grey, brown and grey-brown and not about to argue. She was a very smart owl, and liked to carry Harry's post more than anything else except perhaps fresh frogs, so she bore with the changes and merely preened a lot afterwards.</p><p>They lived on the boat, which the snakes couldn't stand, so there was a sad parting of ways into a magical place full of beetles. Life was simple. They sailed somewhere, took or bought whatever they needed, and sailed on. Ever-wary, they ended up with a different boat that they'd swapped for their newer, smaller boat. </p><p>This one had a lot of rust, but it had a kitchen and places for four people to sleep, assuming they were good friends. The three of them repaired it, changed its appearance and named it 'Ours' after a lot of good-natured bickering and throwing bits of soggy seaweed at each other. In some accents, it came out as 'arse'.</p><p>Harry's laugh was still a hur, hur, hur, but he was working on it.</p><p>The boat called 'Ours' could, did allow a muggle-repelling charm to be fastened to it, and coastguards in speedboats could be confunded into thinking they already knew all about the boat and didn't need to worry about it. This if, by some lack of preparedness or some need to go and shop - and thus be visible - they ever let the muggles realise the boat was there at all. </p><p>In a country blessed with turquoise seas and eternally warm weather, Harry found a place to fit in. There was one area that was very like a muggle Knockturn Alley,  where the local wizards were all but lawless and no Ministry of Magic was likely to bother any of them.</p><p>Harry never had been normal. He still had the hard wariness of the outcast, and he'd never minded someone having scales or missing skin or a few extra teeth. Harry had a new home, with a different language but Knockturn Alley manners. The house they could get was dreadful, but that was what magic was for. After only two fights, no one was arguing about their right to a weed-choked stretch of waterfront or the wreck standing close to it.</p><p>The four of them settled in to brand new lives.</p>
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<a name="section0039"><h2>39. Emilio Farero Gomez</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The real Emilio was the Emilio we made along the way.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry was very, very much not at school. In fact, he was mostly in a boat or on a beach or flying around, or gathering power he might need to use later.</p><p>This wasn't a country that cared whether wizards of a certain age went to school, at least not on the magical side. Harry was surrounded by thieves and ogres and strange night creatures with backwards feet, and felt very at home. Mortimer felt protected, which showed in the glossy fur of Mortiwolf and the way he read the books of Spanish poetry that Sirius was not allowed to tease him for. Harry had smacked Sirius once, with magic, and sent him flying out into the bay, and Sirius had decided to concentrate on teaching Harry to layer spells on top of spells to make very complicated things happen with simple magic, which was exactly the sort of magic Harry now delighted in.</p><p>If Mortimer was asleep, Sirius kept watch as a big black dog. They were probably safe. Harry was learning complex magic, including Transfiguration, with no exam to care about at all. </p><p>Then suddenly he needed to actually care, because there was a local qualification that counted if Harry wanted any respect at all. Not from strangers, who Harry didn't care about, but from Mortimer. </p><p>"People shouldn't be allowed to think you can't do it," he'd said, his brow wrinkled with worry even as he folded his arms to show he was very serious. He flinched a little as Harry sat up from his hammock, but he stood his ground. Three times, he'd said this, in English <em>and</em> Spanish, and now in English again, which made seven, but he hadn't folded his arms before, or looked as though he was about to try to rescue something from a fire.</p><p>So Harry was being educated properly in Spanish by sending Hedwig back and forth, back and forth. He travelled to a very splendid office that managed these things for the entire region, and managed to pass exams as Emilio Farero Gomez. Emilio was now a Wizard in Good Standing, where Harry Potter was a British schoolkid who had disappeared.</p><p>Harry, or Emilio, now had three years to get his N.E.W.T.s. If he had N.E.W.T.s, it meant he was competent rather than unruly, and he could learn the sort of fiddly magic that left Luna with one parent who was forever throwing himself into his work and a great big gap in the rest her life. </p><p>Mortimer wasn't a registered anything. He was just a man under a new name, Marcos. Sirius was Sirio, Mortimer's full brother, supposedly. Sirio and Marcos were treated like absolute scum by anyone who could afford a decent tie, and both wanted better for Harry. They wore him down by showing they actually cared about his well-being even more than Harry did, and by being scared of him and standing up to him anyway. </p><p>The magic was interesting too. His tutors had ways of folding heat and moving it around that British wizards didn't and that could be very useful. These lands grew different plants that could be made into potions that were too expensive to brew at home. So Harry, Emilio, was persuaded to act his age and jump through these educational hoops. He didn't care at all about paper. He did care about Sirio and Marcos.</p><p>Sailing was the easiest way to earn a living, which meant living back on the boat full time, but they had a home port now. They knew people. They could get jobs moving things around. They could make fish float into a net that weighed nothing, full or empty, and keep them wriggling and alive all the way to market. They could make clams leap into the air and spit out pearls that grew in size.  </p><p>It was a living, and a better one still when they picked up both an even bigger boat, that had bunks rather than rearranged cushions, and a witch to look after them, who seemed to somehow decide that they needed a witch by being on the boat and cooking a good dinner when they had only just finalised the sale. Maria was down on her luck and hunting for any job going. Hedwig liked her. Harry liked the food, but Maria turned out to be comfortable to be around like Hannah had been. There and kind and willing to go along with things and to smile. Sirius liked her because she knew who everyone was, and because she wanted to take them all in hand and Sirius quite liked the idea of being taken in hand. Being a godparent was tiring, sometimes, Harry thought, watching the difference between Sirius then and Sirius now.</p><p>Mortimer liked whatever Harry wanted him to like, other than that one thing, but he liked the food as well. And Maria knew werewolves and good strong cages and places she could be when the time came.</p><p>It was possible to be cousins through Sirio's mother. Or, rather, Maria's mother, who was dead, and so was her sister, so there was no one to object to the false claim. With lies and stories they were respectable. </p><p>As real people, they were plausible, when people moved around ports so much. Maria could tell small stories and have people believe that they had been there to see one or the other as a boy. These childhood tales, that had never happened, or had happened to those now dead, were entertaining, when the night was a long, slow journey with nothing to see but stars that looked like so much homework.</p><p>Harry, Emilio, learned about contact lenses, so now he had brown eyes, tan skin, long straight black hair that did as it was told mostly through threats, and a headband. He was straight and as tall as his father had been, which was shorter than Sirio. Marcos, always acutely aware of the state of the moon, was their navigator, Maria kept the boat clean and helped them to find work, Emilio - Harry - did his fair share and studied, Hedwig carried post and nibbled Harry's fingers when he was feeling pensive. </p><p>Sirio did as he was told and laughed and played jokes and was the first to charm a stranger, the fastest with a lie, quick at Spanish, up for mischief, easily bored but always there for Harry. He kept his promise.</p><p>Harry - Emilio - wasn't seeing any witches. Just thinking about Susan hurt in ways he couldn't ignore the way he ignored cuts and burns and bruises and harsh words. He didn't want to put himself through that again. </p><p>Sirio was good at finding the right sort of magazine, and Harry learned a whole new set of Spanish words he didn't use where Maria could hear. Sirio had used one, once, and on the whole they had decided to guard their tongues because Harry - Emilio - was a good boy.</p><p>Harry hadn't ever been a good boy, not when he was trying his best and not when he had done nothing at all. Emilio was a good boy. Emilio wasn't twisted, didn't shuffle, wasn't eyed with pity or disgust or polite unease. Emilio was a whole new person. Dull in his good looks, less interesting. Good N.E.W.T.s weren't as engaging as the weight of needing, of <em>needing</em> to do more with magic than anybody else. To show his enemies up as lazy, frightened fools, because the magic was <em>right there</em> and they didn't bother.</p><p>That was his new motivation. Emilio's motivation. The armour didn't have to be on show, that was all. He would have armour on under his normal-looking skin. That would be difficult to manage, so he worked out, with Sirio and Maria, what he needed to know.</p><p>He hadn't shed the monster on the outside just to grow one on the inside, he decided, but Emilio was nobody's punching bag. So he had to work out how to make sure that anyone who thought he might be an easy target would learn the errors of their ways.</p><p>Sirio hadn't changed at all. He was a ball of anger and quick, bright plans with no care for the consequences, and he was also under Maria's thumb at a word or a gesture. They had a living to make.</p><p>Marcos and Hedwig were pets with jobs, but Marcos was learning too, becoming more decisive. More interesting. The wolf still rolled under the touch of magic, and Emilio wasn't about to share the fact that Marcos would do anything that Emilio ordered him to. </p><p>Their arguments were nearly always about where to put things on the boat, until the three men gave in and let Maria rule them all, and then there was a silent war, of home-made dungbombs and parcels of fish guts and exploding coffee cups, that all had to be handled without Maria being aware of mess being made. It turned into a long, long game to pass the minutes and degrees.</p>
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<a name="section0040"><h2>40. New Life, Old Problems</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wizards, the witch, the werewolf and the owl sailed far enough south that it was winter. They could move heat around, using magic,after some focused learning. They lived like figures of legend on a flying, invisible boat they called Pegaso.</p><p>After a lot, a whole lot of very careful prompting and leaflets and worried looks from Mortimer, Emilio found a place where he wanted to learn official magic good the world over. The skills that worked on boats worked on cars and houses, and word of mouth carried them inland, job to job to job, bus by bus, to a new country, a new ocean, a new boat, a new life. With mountains behind them and an ocean in front of them, they were set.</p><p>Now Emilio, could settle down and begin to learn magic in earnest. He was entirely familiar with the stars and felt he might as well get the piece of paper. He was very well aware of the local wildlife, sometimes up close and personal, although very little that couldn't be picked up and put facing the other way, flames, poison stings and all. He was used to brewing and foraging, to unwrapping biting tendrils, to every spell for protection and all the ways that magic could be made to act on flesh. He didn't know the history that everyone else took for granted, or the old ways of writing them down, so he had to learn.</p><p>It was faster and easier to learn when magic <em>did</em> something, but each and every day, after the exact same argument with all three adults in his life, the dread Dark Lord Emilio sat and learned whatever he was supposed to learn. Every day, he had his work checked over by adults who could only just keep up. Every day, Hedwig flew to take his lessons, dressed in very different feathers, but still nibbling Harry's fingers in the exact same way.</p><p>Emilio sat his final O.W.L.s in December, in an icy cold room up near the top of a mountain, and went back down to the port, and with the results that made Emilio officially a wizard even in Europe, along came Dumbledore.</p><p>"Hello, Harry," he said, after barging his way rudely through their protections and filling the entire gangway of their own private boat with sheer presence of himself, his phoenix and more magic than Emilio could hope to handle.</p><p>They fled. They fled to the capital, and to their Ministry, and found out that no, they did not, legally, have to do a thing Dumbledore said. In fact, the information about Dumbledore's whereabouts was of interest to the authorities. </p><p>The four and their owl went overland, from family to family, back to their old lawless port with the single magical street nearby, and settled back into their old life where Dumbledore had never yet found them.</p><p>Learning on the run wasn't helping Harry's education, but he had, at last, made it to seventeen years old. He had two years to do his N.E.W.T.s, and so they went back across the entire continent a third time, so he could go to school, in September, as a normal student. They could claim their old boat and old lives, knowing now that people were hunting Dumbledore, and that their emergency portkeys worked.</p><p>Why Dumbledore was hunting Harry and not fighting Voldemort, Harry didn't know. He understood, as lazier, less determined people didn't, that working on simple magic over and over, pushing it where it didn't want to go, and beating it until it did as it was told, really <em>meaning</em> it, all of that made Harry more powerful. Voldemort and Dumbledore must have done the same. Both had head starts on Harry. Harry might be able to laugh in the face of a ciguapa, his mind untouched by her magic, and shake her upside down until she decided to go somewhere else, but he wasn't the strongest wizard in the whole world, and he knew it.</p><p>So he learned to send spells back on their sender, without a wand, without a word, even if he was surprised. He learned to do this for every new spell Sirius could learn, over and over, again and again and again.</p><p>Wizarding Britain was officially at war, only against the Order of the Phoenix and any muggleborn they hadn't already locked up. Harry - Emilio - had to decide what he was going to do.</p>
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<a name="section0041"><h2>41. Those Also Fight Who Go And Find Something Else To Do.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Voldemort was too busy taking over Wizarding Britain to go after Harry on the other side of the world, if he was even aware that Harry was elsewhere or even alive. So far as Harry was concerned, this was a good thing. Barely anyone could touch Harry now, which was why he'd put all that work in, but Voldemort was probably an exception. There were any number of adults who should be dealing with him. Harry had a lot to learn and he fully intended to live long enough to learn it.</p><p>The news from Chiloé was only that Dumbledore had been hunting a Dominican family who had settled in Wizarding Chile, and had fled back to the Dominican Republic to escape him. Which meant they should probably be somewhere else, just in case.</p><p>They just didn't speak English any more, not even at home. Harry learned a lot from translating his N.E.W.T.s textbooks so they could be thrown away, and from his E.D.B.A. textbooks. He learned more from watching Sirio getting into fights and rough company when he needed to work off his ready temper on strangers who would never report a thing. </p><p>Magic wanted to protect Harry, and Harry - Emilio - wanted to protect Sirio, and Sirio never told when an invible presence gave dark wizards a good drubbing long enough to haul Sirio away, laughing.</p><p>The five of them, witch, wizards, werewolf and owl settled in a nice street in Santiago, moving up in the world. The Black fortune was gone - they owned only what they earned. </p><p>No more dubious jobs.</p><p>Actual work was fascinating to Sirio, who had always been very, very bright, and who sat his E.D.B.A.s to prove he could, earning them all over again. Marcos did the same, and came out of his exams beaming in the frosted air.</p><p>Maria had finished school long ago, and was a real person, but even she was brushing up on her learning, and teaching Harry when he wasn't at school. Harry was going to be a good student. He had a lot of magic, but it didn't stand up to adults who really cared about him and wanted him to succeed. Disappointment could crush him more than any muggle car.</p><p>Santiago held the nice big library that Harry needed, and better bookshops, and easy access to other capitals, with their bookshops, through respectable travel companies. He would pause at the inviting shadows of narrow streets with hags and werewolves, and then he would not go in.</p><p>Harry Potter was dead. Well, actually, he was wanted internationally, for crimes in Britain, but as a massively scarred green-eyed cripple on the run somewhere in Wizarding Britain, not as a tall, straight-limbed brown-eyed Latino wizard. </p><p>He was thriving at magic. Potions an absolute cakewalk after learning under Snape. It did help, a lot, that he had an extra eighteen months. That the will to thrive, to succeed, burned in him. That he was surrounded by adults who wanted him to be good.</p><p>Of course, there was a war going on too, with his friends mixed up in it. He was strong enough now that he should probably do something.</p><hr/><p>December the fifteenth was when they all held onto an orange crate that was an international port-key to a hidden enclave in Seville, pungent with oranges trampled into the cobbles of a street no wider than the span of Mortimer's arms. </p><p>The travel was new and very whirly and spinny with a hook to the guts that didn't hurt but didn't feel good at all, and it went on for far too long. Harry was very sick, and Sirius laughed so much he was nearly sick too. Being held upside down didn't stop the laughter at all. </p><p>The next journey was a simple hop by apparition. Paris was full of the best cakes Harry had ever tasted, and a theatre of wonders. No one was following them around.</p><p>Hogsmeade was across a wild sea that was indifferent to human death but giving it a good try anyway. No one saw them take newspapers. No one saw Harry sneaking into Hogwarts to look around. No one saw them in Godric's hollow. No one saw him visit the rubble where the Ossary had once been.</p><p>Nowhere, anywhere, was there any trace of any of Harry's friends. All were wanted and At Large, or missing entirely, and if Harry couldn't track them down, that was probably a good thing. What he'd noticed was that all his old teachers seemed to be just fine, and Hogwarts didn't seem any more horrible now than it had when he was a first year. </p><p>No one saw people arrive in the Black family home. Harry took a grave offence to a nasty curse that was clinging to the front hall, looking for Snape. He could empathise, but there was a place for such things. He sent it hunting the caster, to hit him threefold.</p><p>The house was abandoned. Kreacher was still there, not muttering about blood-traitors or his Mistress. Harry made Sirius be nice to Kreacher - he <em>liked</em> house-elves and wanted lots of food. Sirius was going to be kind to and love his servant as Harry loved Mortimer. </p><p>"All right," Sirius said, turning from sulk to grin in an instant.</p><p>"Ask him what he wants," Harry said, an order, to see what Sirius do.</p><p>"What do you want?" Sirius asked. "Tell me," he added at the glare. "Stupid elf. Well, he is."</p><p>The result of his words was surprising. Kreacher had secrets to tell, oh yes, but not to traitor son...</p><p>Harry wasn't a traitor son and he was curious, so they played along. There was, apparently, a locket that Kreacher was supposed to destroy, and that thieves and traitors had stolen before he could. Sirius literally ordered him to forget all about it, and Kreacher was suddenly a lot brighter.</p><p>They went back to clearing out the house, which had been robbed of everything of value, making it easier to strip back to plaster and floorboards. Muggle cash was easy to get and so was food; they could live very well in London. </p><p>Magical London was an absolute dump. Boarded windows and wanted posters, good for a giggle at first, but depressing after a while. The cold got into their bones. They collected all their cash and headed out, taking Kreacher with them, which made life all sorts of easier. Harry was not leaving a perfectly good evil house-elf locked up in an empty box.</p><p>Galleons to Olivos, Olivos to Osos. Santiago was their home, now as wealthy wizards with lots of cash. Harry was Emilio Farero Gomez, and they'd been on a respectable journey abroad. They paid taxes, they had a vault, they had qualifications and good jobs.</p><p>They had an evil house-elf at large in their respectable home. Maria screamed at Kreacher, who glared at her, while Emilio giggled, then introduced them to each other. </p><p>Once she'd managed to stare Kreacher down, Maria was all for having help around the house. Kreacher was all for living with a strong-minded witch with firm standards. He could be actually pleasant, which Sirius hadn't known was possible. </p><p>Kreacher could pop back to their home in London, just like that, they found out when Sirio wanted an old pair of mirrors and Kreacher suddenly had them and was offering them up. </p><p>"Good elf," Sirio said.</p><p>"Kreacher lives to serve," Kreacher said unctuously. It was a dig, and they all knew it.</p><p>"I can free you, you know," Sirio said, eyes narrowed.</p><p>"Kreacher can be polishing the mirrors, Master," Kreacher offered, suddenly very helpful and eager to please.</p><p>Sirius considered several ideas, glancing at Emilio. "Can you get newspapers? From London?"</p><p>"Kreacher can."</p><p>"But you didn't mention it, did you?"</p><p>Kreacher sniggered, and Sirio sighed, giving in. "Kreacher, be a good elf and fetch us a Daily Prophet every day."</p><p>They got the idea that Voldemort controlled the Ministry, without having needed to give them all that much of a push by the looks of it. He had absolutely won, while Dumbledore was running around trying to capture Harry, and Britain was no longer any place they would ever recognise or want to live in. Their home was here.</p><p>Harry couldn't even join his friends without ending up under Dumbledore's thumb. They were safer if he left them alone. Death omens galore, no matter which Seer he went to. </p><p>So, Harry left Britain to its own devices, worked hard and took his N.E.W.T.s at long last. Well, E.D.B.As. </p><p>And then Maria left, to go and marry a nice respectable wizard who wasn't wearing good manners like a snake wore its skin, there only for the duration of a war abroad in a country she'd never seen and that sounded like a wet, cold dump anyway. </p><p>Sirio read stories of the war, frustrated at being able to do nothing about it without bringing about his own doom. Emilio could soothe Padfoot and there wasn't a person there who they could trust to have their back. If they could track down the Bones family, so could Voldemort and they'd be dead. Emilio wasn't going to hope.</p><p>Sirio put poison-arrow frogs in Emilio's bed, and lived with the consequences, and it <em>was</em> cheering, and so was gluing a dark wizard to a wall, one who had been stupid enough to say the British had the right idea where they could hear it. They left him naked and upside down, a diakon radish somewhere unmentionable, only the green leaves showing. The effect was quite jaunty. </p><p>Kreacher was always up for small menaces abroad and Emilio didn't ask. He was out exploring with Marcos, or working hard, being very ordinary and not a Dark Lord or Chosen One at all. Certainly not Dumbledore's 'secret weapon'.</p>
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<a name="section0042"><h2>42. Still Not Harry's Problem, On Pain of Death</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Britain apparently had no free muggleborns at all now. Snape was Headmaster and had been for years. The Bones family were dead, entirely wiped out, even Susan, so that was that. Harry was never going to track her down later and whisk her off to a sunny island to live happily ever after. </p><p>He'd known, really, that he was leaving her to die if she was silly enough to not get out when Voldemort was so clearly around and Dumbledore so clearly useless. She'd died with respectable O.W.L.s and hadn't even made it to Harry's seventeenth birthday, and he'd had no idea. He'd been busy wrestling giant sharks out in warm blue seas.</p><p>He knew he was supposed to feel more about that than the quiet numbness he couldn't talk about, but he never had shared what he thought, not since he lost his eye. He threw the feelings out to the darkness that forever sat on his left hand side, smiled a very normal smile and listened to the rest of the news from a quick look around, Emilio, it'll be safe, that Sirio went on.</p><p>Neville was a hero of the Resistance, talking on the radio now and then. He'd never been clever, and now he was under Dumbledore's thumb. He was good at not dying, Harry had to give him credit for that. Now and then he was angry at Susan because she'd failed to be, but the anger only reminded him of Voldemort and he threw that into the darkness too.</p><p>Voldemort was advancing on France. The Ministry were offering ten thousand galleons for the capture of Harry and for Sirius Black. They didn't know about Mortimer. Mortimer who was now Marcos and staying Marcos.</p><p>Marcos was very, very happy in an ordinary job, shifting books around and letting Emilio know if he found one that was interesting. Each full moon, he was surprisingly happy to be in a cage with a dog and a crow for company. He slept a lot after, and was withdrawn the week before, but it was just how life was if you got bitten and the silver and dittany didn't work. If you went out during the full moon and didn't stay inside reading and practicing spells.</p><p>Emilio was a good, sensible young man, and didn't go out when werewolves were going to be dangerously annoying. Emilio, Sirio and Marco were fitting in to good, sensible lives, and finding it restrictive. Emilio found far too many people reminded him of the Dursleys, in being polite smiles up front and rotten behind their eyes.</p><p>War spread to France. Norway began attacking its muggleborns. Dark Lord Voldemort in the news even down here, and more so in Spain. In fact, the Dark Mark was turning up all over Western Europe. The Wizarding World had another Grindelwald. The original Grindelwald had died while Emilio was still studying his E.D.B.A.s</p><p>"I chose you, Emilio, and I am sticking by it," Sirio said, at a long look he got in return for his latest bout of swearing over the news Kreacher had gone and fetched. "James would want it." He still wasn't drinking, but he did travel away again and come back bruised and burned and pleased with himself.</p><p>As time moved on and Harry still didn't go to war, Sirio picked up a gambling habit, began drinking, and thought Emilio should liven himself up a bit. The more Emilio stayed where it was sensible to stay, the more Sirio drank, and the less Emilio liked his company, and the more Sirio went away and the less he talked about it and the nastier his few words got.</p><p>He probably wasn't going to live all that much longer. The cards were only saying what Emilio already knew. All risk and no reward other than death.</p><p>None of it mattered one single damn to Emilio, who put his savings together with those of Marcos, and bought another boat, La Cisne, The Swan. Cool inside, bigger inside than out, flying, invisible, bristling with awareness, another arm made of wood and metal. Tougher even than Emilio, which took some doing these days.</p><p>Emilio took to sailing the Caribbean when there weren't any hurricanes, and then down to Argentina when there were, and up to Bogata, picking up the news. He spoke English with a Dominican accent, had clear brown eyes that saw things others could not, and really did have long black hair now, even if his second eye was false. His owl was a marvel, brown flecked with gold and a beak that could work as tin-snips. She had talons that could go right through a pick-pocket's wrist, silent flight so that the would-be thief didn't see her coming. </p><p>She was tough, but not immune to curses. Emilio left behind a dead body, torn to pieces and burned to ash. He took with him a still-warm bundle of feathers and bone, and buried her in an overgrown hollow, taking comfort from his snakes.</p><p>Marcos didn't say a word. Nothing came of this incident from the newspapers, but rumour abounded, that Emilio had torn an entire gang apart and burned down their hideout. Maria shook her head at Emilio when he visited her in her married home.</p><p>"You can't fix what can't be mended," she told him, but she was talking about the war. "Sirio said you're pining for a witch who is dead."</p><p>Emilio glared.</p><p>"Young wizards should marry," she said, not intimidated at all, giving him a hug he couldn't help but lean into. "I know a very nice witch called Astaria, and you'd both make each other happy. Trust your Auntie Maria?"</p><p>Astaria liked what Emilio could do to her as much as Susan had, only actually having full sex was much, much better. So good, in fact, that it was very distracting, but Marcos kept watch over the boat and never said a <em>word</em>. Astaria was as loyal and fierce as Susan had been. </p><p>In a muggle cathedral, Emilio lit two candles, and put the past behind him for good.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Getting comments has been great!</p><p>I hope you enjoy this chapter too.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0043"><h2>43. Defining 'Good' by Empirical Research</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After years of terrible war happening to other people far away, Harry Potter was legally dead, which was a weight off Emilio's mind. No one had seen sign of him for seven years. Refugees were fleeing to warmer climes from all over Europe. Even Dumbledore was dead now. By what Emilio could piece together from bars and newspapers, this was the reason for so many more wizards and witches being around the place, begging for places to live and telling everyone local that they were doing things wrong. </p><p>Emilio boated them around the place and nodded and smiled and kept his thoughts inside as he always did. Marcos did his share of the work and was very comfortable company if he remembered to turn his face away from the sun when he got close so that his eyes never shone gold. Astaria made sure they were fed and the boat was clean when Emilio visited her portside home, and handed conjured handkerchiefs to crying witches and patted their shoulders if they didn't say the very stupid things a lot of them did say. All of them collected gossip, rumours and news to see where the Second Great Wizarding War was going.</p><p>Neville wasn't dead. Emilio never would have guessed that Toad-Boy would become impressive and the Hope of Wizarding Britain. Emilio wished him well, but he wasn't going to help. If someone was going to die for the cause, it wouldn't be Emilio, who had spent his entire life bending magic to his will precisely so he wouldn't give his relatives that satisfaction. </p><p>Emilio and Marcos had collected enough savings to get a port-key. He had contacts all over the Caribbean. So he reconciled with Sirio under Maria's watchful eye. There were a lot of hugs that Emilio didn't actually mind, and Sirio put down the bottle again right after Emilio picked it up. He cleaned his teeth and his breath and they practiced together, all of them. Astaria had some eye-watering tricks Emilio was impressed by, and was as good as Sirio, who was scared of her, and better than Marcos, even though Marcos really tried.</p><p>Emilio could taste magic at the end of his arms and the weight of a hostile gaze turned in his direction. He could pick up the prickle of another person's fear. He could move like the first stirrings of a breeze in still air, folded entirely within his magic and as remarkable as a grey sky, enfold himself around someone and slip them both through guarding enchantments before anyone could react.</p><p>People sent careful notes to relatives who had made it out of the Dark Lord's reach. Emilio collected refugees and debts he could use later. Sirio was glad to collect portkeys and keep watch, to drink and pick up rumour, and had all the nastiest ideas for what they should leave behind for Death Eaters to happen upon if they came looking. The four of them were a gang that caused a lot of trouble, then vanished into nothing.</p><p>Emilio avoided vampires. Avoided Wizarding Britain, which had nothing he wanted and too many dead Bones, which was nearly a joke he kept inside his head and threw into the darkness before he turned on those he loved.</p><p>Neville seemed to be taking care of that branch of the war, and Emilio had many reasons he could find for staying far away from that particular set of islands.</p><p>He'd picked up the knack of bouncing up to people with a smile like Sirio did, full of a cheer he sometimes actually felt, thanks to Astaria's frank words and careful doling out of appreciation afterwards. Susan's memory was still a dagger in his thoughts, but Astaria had a knack for magic and no squeamishness at all about killing someone. Emilio wasn't in love, it hurt too much. She didn't seem to notice, or mind.</p><p>If he died or disappeared and they weren't married, Astaria would be left with nothing but condemnation and enemies, Maria pointed out. Astaria deserved the protection of his name. No other wizard would take her, and she wouldn't take any other wizard.</p><p>They married. Through the wedding, Emilio somehow ended up collecting friends and relatives, even if some only thought they were Emilio's relatives because Maria had confunded them and been persuasive. Her husband, Aureliano, was polite and did as he was told by Maria, who knew what was what. Emilio, pushed into it by Astaria, admired Maria's clothes and hat, and saw her light up like the sun. He bore with the crushing hug that followed.</p><p>Sirio was always up for an adventure, but he had friends of his own now, from his old home. Emilo never met him there. Sirio always arrived alone on his boat to some place picked out with a pin, and they'd sail and fish and not drink <em>too</em> much and set out to commit careful mayhem. </p><p>When an entire group of attackers jumped Emilio one time out in rural Hungary, Emilio topped them all like soft-boiled eggs, and didn't know who he'd just killed, because he was gone before the vividly red jets of blood landed on his body. His dreams were just as vivid and gave every possible permutation of people they might have been.</p><p>He had another row with Sirio, on the morning after the night when the attackers in his dream had been Susan and her parents offering Emilio a cup of tea. </p><p>"I'm not doing it any more," he told Sirio. "It's someone else's war, not mine. If they come to me, fine, but I'm living my own life."</p><p>"Harry..."</p><p>"Don't use that name. You sound like Dumbledore," Emilio said, and realised that the words that had just come out of his mouth were truer than he liked. He felt dirty and used, and didn't want to kill Sirius, so he left a warning burned into the air itself and folded himself away to a new boat. If Sirio came to him now, Emilio would kill him, and then feel bad afterwards.</p><p>Astaria kept out of it, which was exactly how she always was, how Susan had been, and was why they were married and not just having a lot of sex. She helped with packing up and the new boat they called Maria, which was very like a lot of other boats. Marcos did his very best, which was a good best, Emilio thought. They sailed out one evening, off into the sunset, and turned up only when they wanted something for themselves.</p><p>It was a good, simple life, studying magic, which was infinitely enthralling, sailing about owing no one a thing, married with no children. Marcos was always around, and never said a word out of place. He seemed happy enough watching Emilio's back and dealing with any posted letters.</p><p>Emilio was out shopping for lunch one day, in a street that was full of interesting magical shops and good restaurants, when he found a good-for-nothing child in rags with a wary air and a bruise down his face, stealing food from a barrow.</p><p>"Would you like to run away to a new home?" Emilio asked, after he'd rescued the boy and paid off the stallholder with bright new gold. "Work hard and I'll feed you." </p><p>"Yes, sir," said the boy. Emilio would have said yes too, in his place. Anywhere but here would be a miracle beyond all of the boy's hopes and dreams. Very suddenly, Emilio felt that he could change the world into a slightly better place, here and now, which was not a feeling he'd had before. He would have to think about that later. For now, he had a problem he could easily fix, and he wanted to.</p><p>Ricardo was sick on the boat and very scared. He drank stomach soothers with a flat disbelief that turned to wonderment at something good finally happening. Astaria cried over him, and fed him well, and gave hm the same treatment Emilio remembered getting from Maria. Emilio found a wand, and began teaching Ricardo how to manage for himelf.</p><p>Sometimes some very foolish being would try to start up trouble with Emilio, or be even more stupid and go after Ricardo, but never twice. </p><p>Emilio was only getting more vicious with time. He started spending more time in those hidden alleys no one 'respectable' ever went to unless they were so rich that consequences didn't matter. He was outwardly beautiful, fast and cruel to anyone who moved against him, and always moving from place to place, collecting friends who liked him as he really was, and followers who wanted to be told what to do and to take care of all of Emilio's small problems for nothing more than a bright smile and a few kind words. </p><p>It was everything Dumbledore and the Dursleys and the Order hadn't wanted Harry Potter to have, and it was very, very good indeed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My thanks to everyone who left comments, they always make my day! Last chapter tomorrow.</p>
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<a name="section0044"><h2>44. Nobody's Wizard But His Own</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sirio did not die by going over to Wizarding Britain and dying stupidly by fighting while drunk, which was his Fate that he'd promised Emilio to not go and meet.</p><p>He didn't die in a drunken fight in Wizarding Europe, which was how anyone sensible who knew him thought that he would go, sneaking there alone behind Emilio's back and lying about what he'd done.</p><p>Sirio was killed in a drunken over a debt. Emilio got the news by owl from Maria, which meant that Marcos handed over the black-edged envelope that Sirio had put together just in case.</p><p>He left Emilio a vicious house-elf, no gold, a mound of empty bottles and a clean house full of motorcycle parts. This house was one that Emilio had to sell to settle the estate, after some instructive weeks of helping Ricardo clear a lot of surprises Sirio had set in place to entertain intruders. </p><p>Ricardo learned a lot about magical healing and about following instructions and reading what he was told to read, and about practicing a spell properly and not just lying and saying that he had. Emilio always rescued him before permanent damage was done. Marcos and Astaria were more reliable, which Ricardo didn't like. Over seventy long days, Ricardo gained and lost and gained Emilio's trust, finally buckling down to his schoolwork every morning like he was supposed to. That was more difficult on a boat.</p><p>Then there were all the followers, who were causing trouble Emilio got blamed for, fixing problems Emilio had not asked them to fix, because he was out of sight and they made their own guesses when they couldn't find him. After the third dead body and the third time plucking a faithful follower out of some Ministry prison, Emilio thought that he should probably get a nice big house people could come and find him in and put to good use all the spells Sirio had passed on to him and perhaps shut Kreacher up too.</p><p>Emilio knew what to do. He didn't like it, but it was the only good path in the end.</p><p>Emilio settled in magical Bogotá as the most powerful wizard there, after six difficult weeks of crushing every effort at resistance.</p><p>He still did not attack people first, but he did finish any fight anyone started.</p><p>He had a trick no one else did, of exploding an attacker into a red spray as soon as their curse hit him. All their magic bounced back and at the same time formed a path that Emilio's magic followed, past any sort of shield. Powerful slicing and disentegrating spells doubled every time they hit a new cell. It was Emilio's own curse and he was very proud of it. He usually didn't even see them die.</p><p>Then, too, he tore the secrets from the minds of vampires who tried their magic on him and exploded them into grey spray at the same time. The third time was the charm. No vampires existed in the city and perhaps in the entire country, because they were all very busy somewhere else.</p><p>Even the Killing Curse bounced, because it wasn't hitting skin. Emilio had spent a long, long time learning to wrap himself in magic. The more people attacked him, the stronger he got, although right now that wasn't a problem, because these days people in Wizarding Colombia who didn't learn quickly died young.</p><p>He was the law, and the law was 'leave Emilio Farero Gomez the fuck alone if he doesn't want to be bothered', which was a nice simple easy law to remember. He wasn't chatty. He was polite to servers and a good tipper. He did not countenance any sort of fighting inside places people ate, picking the loudest person up and throwing them out of the door, without looking up from his book, or going near any sort of magical implement.</p><p>And then, if someone raised a hand to a child, he picked them up and gave them a hard shake and a slap to the face before they'd completed the action. His people hunted down children and checked that they were fed, clothed and that their terrified parents were kind. He had ways of finding out when nobody was around to see. The birds themselves told him, so the rumour went.</p><p>His people paid taxes, not bribes, because the place was a shithole, so if someone was doing a job, they had better do just that job. Certainly they did, so much as any Emilio loyalists could discover. He was the new Dark Lord, albeit a confusing one, and his faction was growing. </p><p>He wanted peace, quiet and people doing the jobs they were paid for. Anything else went, whether it was selling smuggled goods, or kidnap for ransom, murder or arson, but by God, if you went to Calle Oro to eat, you could have your meal in peace. </p><p>Ricardo went off to Chile to go to school, Emilio and a lot of friends going with him, and being entirely respectful of the local magical laws. Emilio wasn't an outlaw. Each summer, they came back, just walked as though they had seven league boots, and Ricardo's real education began, until he was up to his E.D.B.As, and Voldemort, busy over in Europe, was finding out that it's one thing to take land, it's another to hold it. Insurrections grew like wildfire, and mass slaughters only made the resistance more determined.</p><p>Eventually he was gone again. Neville Longbottom was dead, burned while slaughtering Voldemort's snake while actually on fire, which was an impressive way to go, and Voldemort had exploded while trying to kill Hannah Abbott, a very ordinary witch who was even better at not-dying than Toad Boy. Luna told the Quibbler all about it, and announced her intention to go hunting Crumple-horned Snorcacks at long last with some wizard Harry had never heard of.</p><p>Europe was free.</p><p>Emilio had nothing to go back for, just the satisfaction of knowing that he hadn't been needed. </p><p>Then, one very ordinary day, Snape came and hunted him out.</p><p>Emilio had read about him in the Daily Prophet. Snape had fled when Britain liberated itself, which was, Emilio thought, very sensible. </p><p>He'd managed to secure an audience with Emilio, and knelt before him. He had something with him, a precious object he was guarding with his life. "My lord," he said. "We need to talk." He spoke in English, and wore no disguise. He was being polite. He looked just the same as he always had, only older. </p><p>Emilio flicked a finger. Snape could go on.</p><p>Snape was eloquent, his voice demanding attention as he laid out a tale of a prophecy, and showed proof of his true allegiance to the Light. His faded Dark Mark as proof of his connection to the Dark. "It was like this before. The Dark Lord is not dead, and can return. Only you can kill him if he does," he said, swallowing his hatred into cold depths. "The Wizarding World needs you." His tone was pleading. He wanted, sincerely, to put it all in Emilio's lap. </p><p>A coward seeking a powerful master, and he'd killed his last one and Emilio wasn't stupid. Snape vanished in a pretty red spray, because Emilio owed him nothing, nothing at all, and he was not about to martyr himself to false stories and a bucket of memories and a stone bowl.</p><p>He destroyed the memories sitting in vials like preserved lifesucking worms, and kept the bowl, and that was the last time Emilio Farero Gomez ever worried about anything much, in what turned out to be a very, very long, very happy life.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Our journey is finished. I hope you have enjoyed this story and would dearly like to know what you think. My thanks to my readers who commented and made my day every time. </p><p>My plans are to take a break and work on the next story, which is in a very different style and has chapters of a more normal length. I have a lot of fics at various stages of completion, but none at all like this one. </p><p>I hope you all stay safe and have a wonderful day.</p>
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